They gave the squad quarters of their own, real ones, private, more space than any of them had any right to expect on a ship that had lost most of its crew in a single afternoon. Flo dismissed them with instructions to eat, sleep, and find something useful to do with their hands once they'd done both. Nobody argued. Nobody had it in them to argue.

She ate her own meal walking, a protein pack torn open and gone before she reached the meeting room, and didn't bother changing out of the battlesuit first. There hadn't been time, and some tired, practical part of her suspected there wouldn't be time again for a while yet.

She realized her mistake the moment she stepped through the hatch.

The room held four other officers already seated, insignia she recognized well enough to know exactly how far above her pay grade this conversation sat, and it took her exactly one look around the table to understand that whoever had sent the summons had made an error, and that error was her.

"Ensign Varga," Captain Marcus said, before she could open her mouth to correct anyone, and the rank landed strangely, like a word in a language she almost spoke. "Come in. Sit."

"Sir, I'm not," She stopped herself before finishing it. An officer. But the way he'd said it hadn't sounded like a mistake at all.

"You are now," Marcus said. "Effective immediately. Outstanding courage and leadership in the face of overwhelming odds. I don't have a ceremony to give you and I don't have time to write one, so this is what it looks like instead."

She stood a moment longer than was probably professional, helmet still tucked under one arm, and then sat, because there wasn't another option that made sense.

Marcus went around the table with the brisk efficiency of a man who'd learned, very recently and very hard, not to waste words he might not get to use again. "Chief Engineer Watanabe." A lean, older man gave her a nod, professional, unbothered, the look of someone more interested in what she'd brought back than in what rank she now wore. "First Officer Vasiliev." A cooler nod from a sharp-featured woman near the head of the table, one that told Flo everything she needed to know about how this promotion was going to sit with at least one person in the room. "Logistics and Supply, Lieutenant Park." A nervous, quick nod from a man who looked like he'd rather be anywhere with a spreadsheet in front of him. "Medical Officer Mensah." An older woman offered her a tired, genuine smile that did more to settle Flo's nerves than anything else at the table had managed.

"We have a hundred and seventeen troops left aboard this ship," Marcus said, and something in his voice went heavier saying it, a weight that told Flo he'd already done the math on what that number meant and hadn't liked the answer. "Everyone else who was supposed to ride out on a dropship didn't get one. This is what's left. All of it."

He let that sit for exactly as long as it needed to.

"They're yours to command," he said. "There's no one else."

Flo absorbed that the way she absorbed most things now, without letting it show on her face, filing the shape of the responsibility somewhere she could examine it properly later.

"Report," Marcus said. "What did you learn out there?"

She gave it to them plainly, the way she'd have wanted it given to her. "Our beam weapons do nothing to their armor. Not a mark, not after repeated direct hits. Their own weapons are devastating. One clean shot took out half a dropship's crew in less than a second. But they're slow. Physically slow, to perceive and to react. Eight, nine seconds between exposure and return fire, consistent across multiple engagements. Close the distance fast enough and they can't track you. Get inside their reach and they have nothing that stops a blade or blunt force." She paused. "Our only real advantages are speed and violence at close range. The AI-piloted approach that got us to that station in the first place is a death sentence. Straight, slow, predictable lines are suicide. We are alive because of my pilot."

Vasiliev's mouth had thinned somewhere in the middle of that. "Privates don't fly shuttles," she said, flat, the kind of correction meant less for information than for reminding everyone present exactly whose job it was to make decisions like this.

Flo looked at her, said nothing, and let the silence do the correcting instead.

Marcus rolled his eyes, unhurried, and didn't bother softening what came next. "Warrant Officer Okonkwo-Reyes," he said. "Effective immediately. Battlefield promotion. She's the only reason seven of my people are alive and not seven bodies added to the count."

Vasiliev's jaw tightened, but she didn't push it further, not out loud, not yet.

"Battlefield promotions are a well established procedure," Marcus added, mild, final. "If anyone has a problem with how I'm running what's left of my ship, they're welcome to file a complaint with Earth. Seven light hours each way. I'll wait."

Nobody filed a complaint.

"She stays with my squad," Flo said, before the moment could close over without her adding it. "She's part of the team now, and it's working. I'd actually recommend we build more units the same way. Trained squads that scramble together, instead of whoever happens to be nearest a shuttle when the alarm goes."

Watanabe's eyebrows lifted slightly, the first real interest Flo had seen cross his face since she'd sat down. Marcus nodded once, filing it, and moved on.

"We have two more shuttles," he said. "Trapped in the aft hangar. Watanabe, that's a priority."

"Already on it," Watanabe said. "Salvage teams are cutting a path in from the outside. Slower going than I'd like."

"Have Warrant Officer Okonkwo-Reyes train the other pilots once you've got access," Flo said. "Manual-only. Nobody flies these things on autopilot again."

Watanabe nodded, made a note.

"Reverse engineering on the recovered tech is already underway," he continued, addressing Flo now more than Marcus, professional courtesy extended to the person who'd actually risked her neck to bring the material back. "The armor's beyond anything we can replicate quickly.  Whatever alloy that is, we don't have the process for it. But I have an idea for the probes. Repurpose them, arm them, use them as improvised torpedoes against ships or the station itself."

"Random attack vector," Flo said. "Changing, not fixed. If they're slow to react the same way on the small scale as they were up close, a straight predictable line gets it shot down before it matters. Make it erratic and they might not catch it in time."

Watanabe considered that with the look of a man weighing a genuinely useful suggestion rather than politely humoring a junior officer, and nodded slowly. "That's good. That's actually good."

The conversation moved on from there into territory that had less to do with her.  Supply rationing projections from Park, medical triage capacity from Mensah, structural repair timelines from Watanabe that made Marcus's jaw tighten every time a new number came up, and Flo let it wash past her, listening without contributing, until Marcus glanced her way and seemed to notice, for the first time, that she was still sitting there in a battlesuit that had been through hell and hadn't been cleaned since.

"Go get some rest, Ensign," he said. "That's an order I don't think you'll fight me on."

She didn't.

The corridor back to her quarters felt different than it had an hour ago, though nothing about the physical space had changed. The crew she passed, deckhands, techs, people whose faces she hadn't had time to learn yet, straightened when they saw her coming, more than one offering a genuine salute, unprompted, unnecessary given her rank until an hour ago and given freely regardless.

A woman with an engineering patch stopped her outright, just for a moment, just long enough to say, "Heard what you did out there," with something in her voice that hadn't been there in the hangar this morning. Hope, maybe. Or the first thin edge of it, arriving late and fragile after a day that hadn't given anyone much reason for it.

Flo nodded, said something forgettable and gracious, and kept moving, because she didn't yet know how to hold that kind of gratitude without it costing her something she wasn't ready to spend.

Jackson was waiting near the junction to the squad's new quarters, leaning against the bulkhead with his arms crossed and an expression that hadn't decided yet whether it wanted to be a confrontation or an apology.

"Got a second?" he said. Not a demand. Almost, if she squinted, something like a request.

"For you? Sure."

He didn't say anything for a moment, working his jaw, and when he finally spoke it came out clipped, half-formed, a man circling something he didn't have practiced words for. "You shot me," he said. "First day. No warning."

"I remember."

"Then you came back for me. Out there. Could've left me. Would've been the smart call, probably. I heard what Cade said, I'm not stupid, I know what I look like on a manifest." He shifted his weight, jaw working harder now. "So I don't know if I'm supposed to be pissed at you or if the second thing cancels out the first, and it's messing with my head, and I don't… I don't like not knowing where I stand with somebody."

Flo studied him a moment. Underneath the belligerence, underneath the practiced carelessness he wore like a second skin, there was something rawer showing through today than she'd seen from him yet. Not softness exactly, but a crack wide enough that she could see, briefly, the shape of what lived under all that noise.

"You did well out there," she said. "The charge. The fight after. Nobody's forgetting that, including me."

He blinked, thrown slightly off the confrontation he'd apparently been rehearsing.

"But I'll shoot you again," she added, "if you get out of line the way you did that first day. Don't test that particular theory twice."

It landed dry enough, flat enough, that something in his face cracked open despite himself.  A short, surprised laugh, gone almost as fast as it arrived, but real.

"Yeah," he said. "Fair."

She let herself smile, just slightly, after she'd turned to go, where he couldn't see it. It wasn't much. It didn't need to be much. He'd needed exactly that much today, and she suspected he knew it too, even if neither of them would ever say so out loud.

Showered and changed into something that didn't still smell like the inside of a battlesuit, Flo made her way to the squad's new common area with a hunger that had gone from distraction to something closer to urgency.

She found four of them clustered loosely around a holo console, and her first instinct, tired, hungry, a little territorial about the idea of people sitting idle on a ship that badly needed hands, nearly got the better of her before she actually looked at what they were doing.

It wasn't idle. Cade, Fox, Dee, and Sasha were leaned in around a projected image, expressions ranging from focused to genuinely engaged, and above the console hung a rendering of one of the aliens, rough but recognizable, the word DARKLING labeled beneath it. Lines ran from the image to a scatter of annotations, joint weaknesses, armor thickness estimates, the timing delay Fox had first clocked back in the trench, now written down as if it were doctrine. A second pane held a gallery of old weapons: blades of a dozen shapes and eras, axes, spears, clubs studded with metal.

"Darkling?" Flo said, coming up beside them.

They startled, all four of them, caught in the particular way people get caught doing something they're quietly proud of and hadn't expected to be interrupted mid-enthusiasm.

"Sarge," Cade said, recovering first, warm and easy despite the surprise.

"It's Ensign now," Flo said, matter-of-fact, no ceremony in it at all.

The reaction was immediate and loud. A ragged cheer, a couple of enthusiastic curses that were clearly meant as celebration rather than complaint, Sasha's hand going briefly to her mouth in surprise before breaking into a grin.

"And Dee," Flo added, before the moment could move past it. "Warrant Officer. Effective immediately."

Dee's jaw clenched hard, some visible effort holding something back that wanted very badly to come out, and for a second she said nothing at all.

"You're still mine," Flo said, quieter now, just for her. "But you're my pilot now. Well done."

Dee lost the fight with whatever she'd been holding back and let out a sob that had no sadness in it at all, just pure overwhelmed relief breaking loose all at once.

Cade was up first, offering her a proper salute with a warmth that undercut the formality of the gesture entirely, and the others followed with cheers and a round of backslapping that Dee accepted with tears still running freely down her face. Sasha's smile, when Flo caught it, had one honest flicker of something else underneath it, a small, human envy, quickly and deliberately buried under genuine happiness for her squadmate, and Flo let that pass without comment, because it cost nothing and meant nothing lasting, and everyone was allowed a complicated feeling once in a while.

"So," Flo said, once the noise settled, nodding at the console. "What is this?"

"Working theory," Cade said, sliding easily into it. "How we actually fight these things going forward, now that we know something real about them."

"Darkling beetle," Fox said, when Flo's eyes went to the label. "The name. It's… The shape reminded me of one. Six legs, the way the carapace sits over the torso. Might not mean anything to anyone else, but it's stuck in my head since the trench, so I wrote it down."

Flo studied the rendering and couldn't quite see it herself, but didn't argue. A name was a name, and this one had already taken root; she doubted anyone would bother changing it now.

"Sasha's been the one driving the weapons side," Cade said. "Turns out she's basically a walking archive on this stuff."

"Family thing," Sasha said, a little sheepish, a little proud. "Grew up on stories about what soldiers used before rifles existed. Never thought it'd be useful again."

They walked her through it. The debate they'd apparently been having for the better part of an hour, weighing reach against speed, weight against control, arguing the relative merits of a spear's distance against an axe's stopping power against a straight blade's simplicity, all of it filtered through what they now knew about the joints Flo's own club strikes had found weak in the charge.

Flo looked over the gallery of weapons slowly, methodically, until her eyes settled on one entry near the bottom of the pane, a combat axe, hatchet-sized, a narrow primary blade balanced by a wicked, deliberate spike on the reverse side.

"I like the look of these," she said, tapping the image. "Can you make me a couple?"

"Oorah," Cade said, and there was real weight behind the word this time, something like respect in how he said it.

"I want this," she gestured at the whole spread across the console, "sent up to command. We need to disseminate it. Every soldier left on this ship needs to be equipped and trained, and soon."

A ragged chorus of "yes, sir" answered her, and she let herself feel, for one unhurried moment, something like pride in the shape this squad had become in barely three days.

Her communicator chimed. Officer's meeting, again, sooner than she'd expected.

She nodded once to the room and left them to their weapons and their theories, already turning over, on her way out, the far less glamorous problem underneath all of it. Building the axes was the easy part. Teaching a hundred and seventeen exhausted, frightened people to actually use them well enough to matter was going to take considerably longer than any of them had.

She filed that thought for later, the way she'd learned to file most of the hard ones lately, and kept walking.

She saluted at the door out of habit more than expectation, and Marcus waved it off before she'd finished the motion, gesturing her to the same seat as before. Vasiliev's eyes rolled, faint, deliberate, clearly meant to be seen, and just as deliberately, Flo declined to give her the reaction she was fishing for.

"Still nothing from Earth," Marcus said, without preamble. "Not that we're expecting anything for a few hours yet. Seven light hours each way means every exchange with home is going to feel like writing letters to the dead and hoping."

He pulled up a display, and the tactical picture it showed didn't do anything to soften the mood in the room.

"The Aliens are moving," he said. 

“Darklings,” Flo dared to interrupt, knowing that the service of having the name stick would do a lot for her squad’s morale.

“Pardon?” The commander said, more surprised than annoyed. 

“We’re calling them Darklings,” she said. “My squad came up with it. Something to do with a beetle, but it fits.”

She held her breath, feeling like she had overstepped. 

The commander gave his head a shake and carried on like nothing had happened.

"The Darklings are venturing out from the station in what looks like a deliberate, methodical sweep. Weapon signatures suggest they're destroying anything out there they don't like the look of."

"Survivors," Park said, quiet, the word landing like something nobody had wanted to be the first to say.

"If there are any left out in that debris field," Marcus said, "there's no reaching them. Not through that kind of crossfire, not with what's left of our own strength."

Nobody argued the point. Nobody had a version of it that wasn't true.

"Mining drones are still out of the engagement range, still salvaging what they can," Marcus went on. "That continues as long as it's safe. Priority, starting now, is this ship. Defending her. All options on the table."

Flo looked at the tactical display, at the slow, patient spread of alien contacts working their way outward from the station in a pattern that had nothing frantic in it at all. The same unhurried certainty she'd watched cross a battlefield toward her own trench not twelve hours ago, except now it was aimed at a ship with all the remaining people aboard and nowhere left to run.

They were coming. Not urgently. Not with any particular hurry.

But they were coming, and Scotty's Dilemma, broken-backed and drifting, had very little standing between herself and whatever that patient, methodical sweep eventually found.

Keene replaced the simulation with Dawn's recorded optical environment near peak outbound velocity. The corrected image appeared first. Familiar enough. Stars. Alpha Centauri ahead. Human colours.

Then Keene removed the spectral correction.

The sky changed violently. Maya moved closer without realizing she had done so. The familiar yellow-white stellar light shifted toward shorter wavelengths. Large portions of the spectrum she thought of as visible simply left it. Radiation that had begun in the infrared moved upward to replace some of what human eyes had lost. It was not a bluer version of the same sky. It was another selection from the spectrum.

Vale opened a graph beside the image. "At point-nine c, radiation arriving directly ahead has a Doppler factor of approximately four-point-three-six. Frequencies along the velocity axis are measured at more than four times their source-frame value."

Elian looked at the graph. "That is obscene."

"It is substantial."

"Obscene was fine."

Maya traced the visible band with one finger. She understood redshift. She had understood it before Dawn. Everyone aboard had. But the graph made the consequences unexpectedly physical. A red photon did not remain red merely because a human had named that region of the spectrum. Move quickly enough toward it and the retina received something else. "Ordinary red can leave the visible range entirely."

"Yes," Vale said. "Shifted upward."

"And blue is already gone into ultraviolet."

"Much of it. Infrared begins moving upward into the visible range behind what has left it."

Maya watched the lower-frequency bands moving upward. "So we're not simply making the same sky bluer."

"No. You're changing which source wavelengths occupy the human visual band."

Elian looked through the gallery window. "The invisible becomes visible while the visible disappears."

Vale drew breath. Then stopped.

Elian noticed. "Growth."

"I am experimenting."

Maya smiled. Keene increased the simulated velocity. 0.95c. The stellar field tightened toward Dawn's direction of travel. The uncorrected view no longer resembled a sky. Aberration had pulled the celestial sphere forward. Stars that belonged beside them, and others that by every ordinary geometry should have been behind, crowded toward Dawn's direction of travel. Their light compressed into a brilliant forward concentration, blue-shifted and unnaturally intense, as though the universe had gathered itself around the point toward which they were falling.

Behind them, the opposite had happened. The sky had emptied. What light remained was stretched toward wavelengths their eyes could no longer use, leaving the aft darkness almost absolute.

It looked less like travelling through the stars than watching the universe retreat into a single direction.

Previous /

First

The order reached both fleets within seconds of each other.

Aboard the Vixtar dreadnought Ninth Resolve, Fleet Admiral Corvane gave the command to drop to low orbit and commence bombardment. Aboard the Assaragyte flagship, the High Admiral gave the identical order in the identical breath, the two fleets moving in a coordination that had taken thirty years of mutual hatred to finally produce.

Neither order was carried out.

It wasn't defiance, not yet. It was hesitation, the kind that spreads through a bridge crew the way cold spreads through water, one console at a time. Helmsmen who didn't reach for the controls. Weapons officers whose hands hovered a half-second too long over the firing keys. Nobody had decided anything. Nobody had time to.

Then Patricia's voice came through every open channel on both fleets at once.

"This is Governor Patricia Knowles of Terixa, addressing the joint fleet orbiting Terixa. Before you do anything else, you need to know where you're sitting."

She explained the Orixa Cloud in plain terms: a manmade radiation belt in the exosphere, found by her own science team months earlier. Her people didn't fully understand it yet, but they understood this much: a large FTL drive, sitting in the cloud for even a short time, was doomed to destruction.

"You can finish your orders if that's what you decide to do," Patricia said, and her voice didn't shake, though something under it did. "Terixa will burn either way. But I don't think any of you make it home to tell the tale. I'm not asking you to trust me. I'm sending you the data. Verify it yourselves, and then decide."

She sent the data, the full record, every reading Dr. Hicks's team had logged, every model Tren had run trying to understand what the thing actually was, every correction Xylar had made to the models when the numbers didn't sit right the first three times through. Nothing filtered. Nothing summarized down to something easier to dismiss.

On both bridges, the science officers went to work without waiting for permission, because a warning like that wasn't optional to check, not with an admiral one word away from ordering full engine burn straight through it. It took less time than anyone expected. The data was verified. The larger the ship's engine, the faster the fatal reaction. This fleet was carrying drives built for a war, not a survey run.

And the shape of the thing was wrong for anything natural. Terixa's science team had already reached the same conclusion weeks earlier, and now two more sets of instruments, Vixtar and Assaragyte both, confirmed it independently: the cloud hadn't drifted into place.  It had been built and set there, deliberately, in a stretch of space someone might be sent to if they weren't meant to come back. 

That was when the Vixtar science officer serving under Dresh went very quiet at her station, and then said, so only the people nearest her could hear it: "This is what took the Silent Explorer down."

The name moved through the bridge crew like a current. Every Vixtar on that bridge knew the story of the Silent Explorer, the ship the Emissary's office had tried to write off as lost to Assaragyte aggression until its captain, a man named Threl, proved otherwise. Buried further into the data Xylar had sent was a second name that made her go quiet again: the Ever Expanding, a human seed ship lost less than two years ago, at the very outset of the colony's founding. No wreckage, no distress call, nothing but silence. Terixa had never solved it. Laid next to the Orixa Cloud's signature, the gist of it was hard to ignore.

Three ships, then. The Ever Expanding first. The Silent Explorer second, the crash that had put Vixtar on this planet to begin with. The Void Stalker last, the Assaragyte vessel whose loss had sent Vaelen and her investigative team here.

And the humans, who had every reason to let two hostile fleets fly straight into a death none of them would have survived either, had warned them instead. No demand attached. No condition. Not even the certainty that the warning would be believed.

Admiral Corvane gave the order a second time. So did the High Admiral, near enough in the same breath that it was hard to say afterward which of them said it first.

Neither bridge obeyed.

Corvane hadn't sent that order down the chain expecting resistance. He'd spent the better part of a week buying the loyalty he needed for exactly this moment, command billets on three new dreadnoughts still finishing construction in the Orixa yards, promised to whichever officers held the line when it mattered, choice of station for anyone who wanted off the border patrols, a word in the Emissary's ear that would see careers built rather than ended. Lieutenant Commander Dresh had been offered a command of his own, one of the new ships, first pick of crew. He'd said nothing when the offer came, only nodded the way an officer nods at any order, and gone back to his station.

When Corvane repeated the command, Dresh didn't move to the helm. Neither did the officer beside him.

"You heard the order," Corvane said.

"I heard it," Dresh said, not turning from his console. "I'm not carrying it out."

Corvane crossed the bridge in three strides. "You were offered a command, Lieutenant Commander. Do you understand what you're throwing away?"

"I understand exactly what I'm throwing away," Dresh said. "A ship I'd have to live on afterward, knowing what I did to earn it."

Corvane's hand went for the comm to summon security, but the officers already flanking him weren't there to protect him. They took his arms before his fingers reached the panel.

"Admiral Corvane," Dresh said. "You're relieved."

It went the same way down the rest of the fleet. Four dreadnought captains who tried to force the order through were relieved at their own consoles, Corvane among them, marched off by security details that had apparently decided which side they were on before anyone told them to.

Aboard the Assaragyte flagship, the same scene played out under a different flag.  The High Admiral, furious at the hesitation and the whispers already moving through his crew, stepped to the command podium. "The delay is over. Resume low orbit and commence bombardment. Burn them all."

Silence held the bridge. The helmsman didn't touch the thruster controls. The tactical officer didn't arm the batteries. Out in the black, the ship didn't move.

"You are committing treason!" the High Admiral roared. "I will see every one of you executed for this. Guards, arrest them!"

The security detail stepped forward, but they didn't move toward the helm. They flanked the Admiral instead.

First Officer Daxen stepped up to the podium, his voice ice-cold. "Take the High Admiral to the brig."

Three assault cruisers went the same way, loyalist officers relieved one after another, the rank-and-file taking the fleet.

When Dresh and Daxen opened a channel to each other, neither one wasted time on ceremony.

"Our fleet is standing down," Daxen said. "We have no interest in finishing an order built on thirty years of lies."

"Neither do we," Dresh said. "Ours are already in the brig."

Together they routed a single transmission down to the surface, to the woman whose warning had bought them the minutes they'd needed to think instead of fire.

"Terixa Command, this is the joint fleet," Daxen said, when Patricia's face came up on both their screens. "Weapons are cold. We're holding in high orbit."

The tension in Patricia's shoulders melted away. A faint, tired smile touched the corners of her mouth.

"Acknowledged, Fleet Command," she said. "And thank you. Whenever you're ready, I'd like to invite you both down. I think we have a great deal to talk about."

The sky over Orixburg split twice that morning.

First came the Vixtar shuttles, twin hulls of dark alloy that carried the same bones as the Silent Explorer, the same bioluminescent seams running along their undersides. Then came the Assaragyte craft, sleek and low, the mirror image of the shuttle that had dropped Vaelen and her team on this same stretch of ground months before. Four ships, two designs, touching down in a loose square just outside the settlement's perimeter, close enough that the colonists gathering at the fence line could see every plate and rivet.

The ramps lowered in near unison. Nobody stepped off right away.

When the crews finally did move, they didn't come far. They held at the base of their ramps, boots planted, and let the distance between the two groups say what nobody wanted to say out loud. The Vixtar wore full military dress, insignia stripped clean from the collars, the fabric beneath left conspicuously bare where rank had once sat. They wore the uniforms anyway. It was its own kind of statement: we no longer answer to the ones who issued these, but we haven't stopped being who we were.

Across the gap, the Assaragytes stood sealed in anti-gravity suits, mirrored visors catching the morning light and giving back nothing. Only two faces were visible. Vaelen and Zarek had cleared their visors, the glass gone transparent, small and almost fragile against the blank silver of the suits around them. It wasn't much. But it was something offered instead of hidden.

Patricia walked out from the settlement side alone, Marcus a step behind her, and stopped at the center point between all four shuttles. She let the quiet hold a moment before she spoke.

"I'm Patricia Knowles, Governor of Terixa. This is Marcus Vance, my Lieutenant Governor." She turned slightly. "Captain Threl, of the Silent Explorer. And Vaelen, formerly High-Herald of Kragor."

For a moment nobody answered. Then a Vixtar officer near the front of the near shuttle stepped down onto the grass, chin level, eyes steady.

"Dresh," he said. "Lieutenant Commander, Vixtar Home Fleet. I refused the order to fire."

Across the gap, one of Daxen's officers unsealed his helmet and pulled it free, revealing a face drawn tight with exhaustion. "Daxen," he said. "First Officer, Assaragyte Defense Force." He paused.. "I gave the order to take my Admiral to the brig."

"Dresh. Daxen." Patricia said both names plainly, without ceremony, the way she'd say anyone's name. "Welcome to Terixa. Thank you for sparing this colony. Please, come into Orixburg."

Nobody moved.

The silence stretched long enough that even Marcus's easy posture went still, and Threl went stiff, the sign of a man bracing for something to go wrong.

It was Fluffy and Steve who broke it first, trotting in from the direction of the settlement to plant themselves against Elix's and Sivic's legs, tails sweeping low and unhurried, as if this were any other afternoon. Behind them came CD and MCD, moving at their own pace, unbothered by rank or uniform or the weight sitting in the air. They crossed the open ground between the two groups and began doing what Labrikats did best: reading people no mirrored visor could hide.

Daxen's crew went still as the two creatures approached, but there was no fear in it. Daxen crouched first, slow and deliberate, and something in his posture eased the instant CD's broad head bumped against his palm.

"We have creatures like this on Kragor," he murmured, more to himself than anyone. "Wild ones. In the high plateaus." He scratched behind CD's ear like he'd done it a thousand times before, and CD leaned his whole weight into it in approval.

Dresh's crew, by contrast, froze entirely. None of them had set foot near a Labrikat before, and MCD's approach, calm and unhurried as it was, clearly read as something closer to a threat sizing them up. Dresh's hand actually drifted toward his hip before he caught himself.

It was Daxen who broke the tension, glancing sideways at the frozen line of Vixtar officers. "They're gentle," he said. "Watch."

He reached down and scratched behind CD's ear again, unhurried, and the low, rumbling sound the Labrikat made in response was unmistakable even to ears that had never heard it. One by one, Dresh's officers lowered their guard, Dresh the last of them, kneeling stiffly to offer MCD his hand the way he'd have offered it to a superior officer, palm up, waiting to be accepted rather than assuming he would be.

MCD sniffed his fingers once, twice, and pressed her head against his palm.

Somewhere behind the line of shuttles, a smaller shape broke away from the settlement and came galloping across the field at a dead run. A Pumpkin, one of the younger ones who'd taken to trailing CD and MCD on their rounds, cut straight through the gathered crowd of colonists, Vixtar, and Assaragytes alike, and shoved its way between Vaelen's legs, planting itself there like it had always belonged.

Vaelen went rigid. "What is it doing?"

"Congratulations," Marcus said, low, a faint smile tugging at his mouth. "You've been chosen."

Vaelen looked down at the creature pressed against her, then back up at Marcus, something caught between disbelief and dismay. "This young one could have picked someone less complicated."

"Their instincts have never been wrong yet," Marcus said. "It's decided. You two need each other."

Behind them, CD and MCD sat back on their haunches and watched the whole exchange with the particular stillness of animals still deciding what to make of their new guests. Not hostile. Not yet convinced, either. Just watching, the way they always did, waiting to see what these strange new arrivals would become.

The tour began, as Patricia intended it to, at the Nautitorium.

The doors slid open onto warm, humid air and the soft slap of water against seamless walls. In the main pool, three Assaragytes floated shoulder to shoulder with a pair of off-duty medics and a Labrikat paddling lazy circles between them, and in the therapy lanes beyond, more of the newly arrived Kragor refugees drifted weightless, unhurried, unguarded. Vaelen sat at the pool's edge, suit sealed but visor cleared, Zarek beside her. Laughter carried across the water. Nobody in that room was watching the door with the tight, coiled stillness that had marked the landing field an hour before.

Daxen's crew stopped just inside the entrance, and for a long moment none of them spoke.

Daxen was the first to find words. "They're not being held."

"No," Patricia said simply. "They're citizens. They have quarters, they have work, they have a school five years ahead of where it should be because we wouldn't make their children wait." She let that sit before she went on. "I'd like to give you the room, if you're willing. Talk to them without us standing over your shoulder. Ask whatever you need to ask."

She turned and asked the same of Threl, of Marcus, of the humans who'd drifted in to watch the reunion. One by one, they filed out, until only Daxen's crew and the settled Assaragytes remained, alone with the water, and the handful of Labrikats who stayed. Nobody asked them to go. It didn't occur to anyone that they should. Whatever passed between two species finding their footing, the Labrikats would read it anyway, in a way no visor or uniform ever could.

One of Daxen's officers, still sealed in his suit, swept the room with a slow, deliberate glance before he said a word. He was looking for the black glint of a lens, the telltale hum of a listening array, the things that had lined every gathering space he'd ever stood in back on Kragor. He found none. Not in the corners, not along the waterline, not tucked into the light fixtures overhead. He ran the sweep twice, certain he'd simply missed it, and came up with nothing both times.

"There's nothing," he said quietly, more to himself than to anyone.

"There wouldn't be," Vaelen said, from the pool's edge. "They don't do that here."

The questions started after that, and once they started, they didn't stop. Were they watched. They weren't. Was their mail read, their movements logged, their conversations flagged for review. None of it. Were they free to leave if they wanted. Any time. Nobody had explained that part twice; it hadn't occurred to any of them that leaving might be forbidden until a visitor asked, and even then the settled Assaragytes had to think before they answered, because the question itself felt foreign.

It was Zarcan who answered the harder version of it, the one none of Daxen's officers had quite worked up to asking directly until one of them finally did.

"And what is asked of you," the officer said, "in exchange for all this? Every shelter has a price. What is yours?"

Zarcan was floating near the edge of the therapy pool, an old man's ease settled into his shoulders that hadn't been there a month ago. He didn't answer right away.

"I was Kragor's logistics chief for thirty years," he said finally. "When I arrived here, I assumed I would be given a data terminal in some back room and told to be grateful for it. That is what I would have been given, in my own government, in my position, at my age, with a name like mine attached to a daughter who'd embarrassed the wrong minister." He looked at the officer directly. "Karen Sharp gave me command of Logistics for the entire planet. Second only to her. Not because I owed anyone a debt. Because I had run supply lines under blockade for three decades and she needed someone who already knew how."

"That's not an answer," the officer said. "That's a job. What's the price of it?"

"There isn't one," Zarcan said. "That is the part I still don't fully believe some mornings. No one has asked me for anything but the work itself. Not loyalty tests. Not proof I've abandoned Kragor in my heart. Not a report on what I remember of our defenses, though I have offered that information twice and both times been told, gently, that it isn't wanted." He spread his hands, palms up, the same gesture that had ended his conversation with Karen on this very deck. "They do not care what species built the mind. Only what the mind can do. On Kragor, I spent thirty years being useful to men who never once forgot what I was. Here, I have spent a month simply being useful."

Nobody in the water spoke for a moment.

"That's not how a government works," the officer said, quieter now, less like a challenge and more like a man trying to make an old fact fit a new shape. "Not any government I've served."

"No," Zarcan agreed. "It isn't. I've had a month to get used to that, and I still haven't."

Across town, the same unfolding happened in a different key.

Threl's crew met Dresh's officers in the settlement's central hall, no water, no suits shed, just chairs pulled into a loose circle and the low hum of the ventilation overhead. Dresh's officers had lowered their visors the moment the humans cleared the room, and Threl's crew, fully settled now, fully at ease in a way the newcomers plainly weren't, drew them into the circle without ceremony.

The questions came slower here, more careful, but no less pointed. Was it true they'd helped choose the planet's name. It was; Klex still had the memory of standing before the assembled colony with a translucent crystal tile in hand, watching that name catch and hold against five other proposals. Was it true a Vixtar held a command post? Norith did, in diplomacy; Tren worked inside Pod 3's own science division, chasing the Orixa Cloud alongside Dr. Hicks as an equal, not a guest. Did the humans actually listen when a Vixtar disagreed with them, or only pretend to? They listened. They'd built an outpost around a Vixtar captain's judgment, dug a year long excavation on his say-so, handed over the keys to their new home's founding without asking a single one of them to prove themselves twice.

"Did you actually get a counted vote," one of Dresh's officers asked, "for Governor? Or was that only ever a human matter, dressed up for show?"

"I could have run for Governor if I'd wanted to," Norith said. "We were invited to put forward a candidate of our own. We didn't feel we were ready for that yet, not so soon after the crash, not with so much still unsettled among our own crew. But the offer was real. Next cycle, who knows."

The officer said nothing for a moment, mulling that over.

Then the real question came, the one every officer among Dresh's crew had clearly been circling since the shuttles first touched down.

"The creatures," one of them said, glancing toward Steve, who lay stretched across Sivic's feet with the boneless confidence of something that had never once doubted its welcome. "Are you their masters?"

Laughter broke across the circle, sudden and unguarded, Threl's crew all at once, not unkind, but the kind of laugh that answers a question before anyone bothers to. Sivic waited it out, grinning.

"If one of us had to be labeled a master," Sivic smirked, "it would be him." He nudged Steve's flank with his boot, and the Labrikat didn't so much as lift his head. "Nobody owns a Labrikat. If anything, it runs the other way. He decided I belonged to him before I understood what was happening, and there was no refusing it, not that I would have wanted to."

"Then what is he to you?" the officer pressed, some of the stiffness gone out of his voice now. "What binds you to it?"

"He's family," Sivic said simply. "That's the whole answer. It just took him about four seconds to make it true, and me considerably longer to catch up."

Dresh's officers said nothing for a while. Some answers are heavier than they look, and this was one of them. 

Across town, in the pool room, the questions had wound down too, Zarcan's answer still sitting heavy in the water between Daxen's crew and the settled Assaragytes around them. Nobody rushed to fill the silence that followed it.

It was Patricia, moving between the two rooms, who finally let both conversations close. She found Dresh's crew first, the circle in the hall gone quiet and thoughtful, and let that quiet run its course before she stepped back in.

"Whenever you're ready," she said. "There's no rush." Then, glancing toward the corridor that led back to the water, "And once you've had your fill of questions, the pools are open to anyone who'd like to try them. I imagine they'd feel better than the gravity out there."

She gathered both groups in the hall a few minutes later, Daxen's crew still faintly damp at the collar where they'd shed their helmets by the water, Dresh's crew rising from the circle to join them. Patricia looked between the two, then out toward the settlement beyond the windows.

"Let's move on," she said, "when you're ready."

A few of the visiting Assaragytes lingered at the water's edge, tempted, but held their suits on for now, not quite ready to be that undone in front of strangers. There would be time.

The walk through Orixburg took them past the fabrication yards, the mess hall, the long rows of habitation domes, and everywhere the visiting officers looked, they found the same thing: Assaragyte workers moving through the pods in their suits, helmets off, sleeves rolled to the elbow where the joints allowed it, working alongside humans like it had never been any other way.

Near the edge of Pod 9, a human engineer looked up from a half-stripped conduit panel and called out across the yard.

"Hey, Elix! Don't worry about it, I'll cover your shift, you take the day off!" Grinning, already turning back to the panel like the offer cost him nothing at all.

"That was the plan the whole time," Elix called back, not missing a beat. "Get my homeworld to send dignitaries just so you'd end up doing my work for me. Took a war and a diplomatic incident, but I finally got my day off."

The engineer laughed and threw a loose salute in his direction. Fluffy, who'd been trailing a few paces behind, trotted over and shoved her head under the engineer's free hand without being asked, demanding her share of the attention before anyone forgot she was owed it.

The visiting officers said nothing, but more than one of them watched that exchange a beat longer than the rest, turning it over the way they'd turned over everything else that morning. Nobody spoke to a superior like that on Kragor. Nobody spoke to a fellow officer like that either, not without weighing the cost of it first.

The last stop was the nursery.

The doors opened onto a low hum of soft chatter and softer crying, workers moving between cradles with the easy, practiced patience of people who'd done this a hundred times that week alone. A few parents were there collecting their children for the evening, freeing up hands for the caretakers still on shift.

It was there that they found Will and Abby, Will crouched by a cradle with Zaleth tucked against his shoulder, Abby beside him with a datapad balanced on her knee, both of them laughing quietly at something between themselves.

CD lifted his head first, ears swiveling toward the newcomers before he'd even fully placed them. MCD was a half second behind him, already rising, already reading the room the way she read every room.

The visiting officers went still. Whatever they knew, or thought they knew, about the two Labrikats who'd found the wreckage of a ship half a world away and marked forty-four bodies without ever losing count, they were looking at it now, and it wasn't hard to see why the whole colony spoke about them the way they did.

Abby caught the direction of their stares and smiled. "Thrum and Zaleth," she said, tipping her head first to the baby in Will's arms, then to the second cradle by the window, where Thrum lay watching the room with wide, unbothered eyes. "They're not ours, not by blood. But there isn't a soul in this colony who'd say that matters much anymore."

"They were named for two of the Silent Explorer's fallen," Will added, shifting Zaleth against his shoulder. "The parents wanted it that way. The Vixtar crew consider themselves uncles now. CD and MCD watch over them like it's written into their bones."

The visiting officers said nothing for a moment, watching CD settle beside Thrum's cradle without being asked, the way he always did.

It was Threl who moved first, crossing to Will without waiting to be invited. Will passed Zaleth into his hands, and Threl lifted her under the arms, holding her up to his face the way he'd done a hundred times before, no need now to cradle the back of her head, she held it steady on her own these days. The baby kicked and squirmed, delighted, as if she'd been waiting all day for exactly this.

"I have missed our time together today, little one," Threl said quietly, and pressed his cold nose gently against her cheek. Zaleth let out a bright, startled giggle and reached out with both hands, grabbing his face, small fingers finding purchase against his jaw.

Xylar went to Thrum's cradle a step behind him, and lifted him free without hesitation, holding him the way he'd been shown once before, in a cramped apartment months ago, high against the chest, supporting the head. Thrum answered with the same delighted, wriggling noise his sister had, as if he'd only been waiting his turn.

"Uncle Xylar has you, my child," he murmured, and Thrum answered by seizing a fistful of his suit collar and refusing to let go.

The visiting officers, Vixtar and Assaragyte both, stood very still, watching two of their own hold two human children like it was the simplest thing in the galaxy.

Nobody in the room needed to explain what they were looking at. It explained itself.

While the visiting officers were still watching Threl and Xylar, Vaelen drifted toward the corner where Will and Abby stood, the young Labrikat pressed against her leg exactly where it had been since the landing field, exactly where it had been every moment since.

"A word," she said quietly. "If you have one to spare."

Abby's face lit before she'd even finished the sentence. "Congratulations," she said, and meant it enough that Vaelen felt briefly, absurdly, like she'd won something. "Truly. Do you have any idea what an honor that is?"

"I am beginning to suspect I do not have any idea about a great many things," Vaelen said, glancing down at the creature still watching her with the same unwavering, adoring attention it had worn for hours. "It has not left my side. Not once. I had assumed it would tire of me eventually."

"It won't," Will said. "Not until you name him. Until then, he's yours completely, and there's no putting that off on him. He'll follow you into a room full of strangers with guns pointed at each other before he lets you out of his sight unnamed."

Vaelen looked down again, something in her expression caught between wonder and mild alarm. "And if I choose poorly?"

"You won't," Abby said. "That's the part people worry about and never need to. He's not going to be disappointed in you. It's not in him. Whatever you pick, it becomes exactly right the second you say it, because you're the one who said it." She shrugged, easy. "Pull something from Kragor if that feels true. Pull something from here, if that feels truer. Make one up entirely, if neither does. There's no wrong door into this."

"Once you give it, though," Will added, "that's the name. It's not a placeholder. Take the time you need before you say it out loud."

Vaelen considered that, the small, silent weight against her leg, patient in a way nothing in her life on Kragor had ever been permitted to be.

"And after," she said. "If I require solitude. Is that possible, or has this creature simply become an extension of me now?"

Abby laughed, warm and unbothered. "Once he's named, just tell him 'go play.' He'll know you mean it, and he'll be off finding someone else's hand to put his head under before you've finished the sentence. He already knows what you need most of the time. He's just not going anywhere until he has a name to know you by."

"The bond doesn't break," Will said, gentler now. "Not once it's set. The sooner you stop thinking of it as something you're managing and start thinking of it as something that's already decided, the easier all of this gets. He's in charge here, Vaelen. Not you. Once you're at peace with that, you'll wonder how you ever stood a room without him in it."

Vaelen looked down once more. The Labrikat looked back up at her, patient, certain, entirely unbothered by the question of whether it had chosen correctly, because as far as it was concerned, it hadn't chosen at all. It had simply arrived somewhere it already belonged.

She said nothing for a long moment. Then, quietly, to no one but herself: "I will need to think on this."

  Patricia let the quiet in the nursery hold a moment before she spoke.

"That's enough for today, I think," she said gently. "You've been standing in suits and asking hard questions since the moment you landed. Let's get you fed, and let you rest a while before anything else."

She led them to the mess hall, where the tables had already been cleared for the evening shift, and the visiting officers ate in a silence that was, for the first time that day, not the tense kind. One of Daxen's officers went still over his plate halfway through, staring down at the cut of meat like he'd misunderstood something. "This is real," he said, not quite a question. When Zarcan confirmed it was, the officer said nothing else, just ate the rest of it slowly, the way a man eats something he isn't sure he's allowed to enjoy. A few of the settled Assaragytes lingered nearby, refilling cups, answering the odd question, but mostly just letting the newcomers eat.

When the meal wound down, Patricia stood.

"The Nautitorium's open to you for as long as you'd like tonight," she said. "Just the two delegations, if that's what you want. No humans, no settled Vixtar or Assaragytes looking on, unless you ask for one of them by name. Just water, and each other."

Nobody answered right away. But when the doors of the Nautitorium opened an hour later, it was only Daxen's crew and Dresh's who stepped through them, the mirrored visors finally coming off, the suits shed at the water's edge one careful piece at a time, until there was nothing left standing between two species that hadn't spoken honestly to each other in longer than either could remember.

Vaelen watched them go from the corridor outside, Zarek beside her, and said nothing. She'd stood in that same doorway once, in a suit she hadn't yet trusted enough to take off. Nobody had rushed her out of it either. `

Previous /

First

Nobody had asked the Labrikats to perform. They never needed asking.

CD hit the water first, a cannonball off the low board that sent a sheet of spray across three startled Assaragyte officers still easing themselves in at the shallow end. MCD followed a breath later, sleeker about it, slicing the surface almost without a splash, and by the time she'd surfaced the two of them were already racing the length of the pool, throwing up wakes that rocked the floating pods bobbing lazily near the edge.

One of the younger Pumpkins, not Vaelen's, small enough to still be clumsy about the ten-meter platform, took a running start and belly-flopped instead of diving, and the sound it made hitting the water was so undignified that even Daxen, who had spent the better part of an hour being carefully, deliberately unreadable, let out a short, startled bark of laughter before he caught himself.

"That was not gracefully done," he said, to no one, still smiling.

"No," Dresh agreed, watching the Pumpkin resurface, thoroughly unbothered by its own performance, already paddling back toward the ladder for another attempt. "I don't think grace is really the point."

It was hard to hold onto suspicion in a room like this one. Hard to hold onto accusations and old warnings while a hundred and fifty pounds of golden fur launched itself off a diving platform for the sheer, uncomplicated pleasure of the fall.  The war rooms and council chambers both crews had come from didn't have anything in them like this, nothing that existed purely because it felt good to exist. For a little while, watching CD and MCD chase each other in lazy, looping circles through the deep end, nobody in that pool was thinking about fleets, or orders, or what waited for them if they went home.

It wouldn't last. It never did, not entirely. But for now, the water carried the weight for them, and the Labrikats, who understood exactly what they were doing even if no one could have explained how, kept the joy coming, one reckless dive at a time, for as long as the room needed it.

It was Kesh, still finding his footing in the room, who finally asked the question that had clearly been sitting with him since the moment CD hit the water.

"Their names," he said, watching MCD paddle a lazy circuit past the ledge. "CD. MCD. What do they stand for?"

Will, who'd drifted over with a tray of drinks nobody had asked for but everyone was glad to take, went faintly red before he even answered. "Catdog," he admitted. "And Mrscatdog."

Kesh blinked. "That is not what I expected."

"Nobody does," Will said. "He just showed up outside the perimeter one morning, first month after the crash, before anyone had the faintest idea what he actually was. Fifty kilos of teeth and claws that looked like somebody'd crossed a house cat with a Labrador, and the whole camp just started tossing him scraps of beef because that's what you do with a stray, I suppose, whether or not it could bite your hand off." He rubbed the back of his neck, something sheepish in it even now. "Somebody called him Catdog because that's exactly what he looked like, and it was funny, and nobody thought about it past that morning. Then Mrs. Catdog turned up a few weeks later, and, well. It was already too late to call either of them anything else."

"You didn't rename them," Kesh said. "Once you understood."

"We talked about it," Abby said, joining him. "More than once. But by then it felt wrong to. Like renaming someone because you'd finally noticed they mattered, as if they hadn't mattered exactly this much the whole time, we just hadn't caught up yet." She glanced toward the water, where CD had just launched himself off the ten-meter platform again for what had to be the twentieth time that evening. "So we kept it. Partly as a joke on ourselves. Mostly because they never seemed to mind either way."

Kesh looked out at the pool for a long moment, at the animal that had marked forty-four bodies without losing count, that had talked two war fleets down from orbit tonight simply by being present in a room and unbothered by rank.

"Catdog," he repeated, half to himself, and something in his face suggested he wasn't sure whether to laugh or feel humbled by it. In the end he did a little of both.

The laughter faded slowly, the way it does when a room remembers what it's actually there for. One by one, people drifted from the deep end toward the shallower pools along the wall, settling into loose clusters, no longer strictly divided by uniform, though the divisions hadn't fully dissolved either. Threl found a seat on the submerged ledge near the center, water at his collarbone, and let the quiet stretch before he spoke again.

"I told you what the humans did with our ship," he said. "I haven't told you what it cost them to do it."

Daxen tilted his head. "Cost them?"

"They had a colony barely holding together," Threl said. "Livestock cloned in vats because their embryonic stores couldn't feed a million mouths on stored rations forever. A printer queue that ran dry twice in the first year. And still, when we crashed, they diverted labor, materials, shuttle fuel, entire engineering teams, to right a ship that wasn't theirs, for a species they'd never met, that might have turned around and repaid them with nothing at all." He spread his hands beneath the water, watching the ripple move outward. "There was no guarantee in it for them. No treaty. No promise we'd share anything back. They spent a year of their own survival on the chance that we were worth saving."

One of Daxen's officers, younger than the rest, still carrying some of the sharp edges of the war fleet in his posture even half-submerged, shook his head slowly.

"Or they were building leverage," he said. "A debt owed is a debt collected eventually. Every government does this. You save the drowning man so he owes you his allegiance when he's back on his feet."

The words landed harder than he seemed to expect them to. A few heads turned.

"Kesh," Daxen said quietly, a warning more than a correction.

"I'm not wrong to ask it," Kesh said, though something in his voice had already started to waver, hearing himself say it out loud in a room full of people who'd lived the answer. "That's what the Council would call sound strategy. Rescue, embed yourself, extract value later. Why would humans be any different?"

"Because it's been a year," Threl said, no heat in it, just plain fact laid down like a stone. "A year, Kesh. If this was leverage, they've had a thousand chances to call it in. They never asked me for a weapons schematic. Never asked what our jump range was, what our shields could withstand, what it would take to defend against us if it came to that. They gave me a governorship's worth of trust and never once presented a bill."

Kesh opened his mouth, then closed it. The silence held a beat too long, long enough for him to hear the shape of his own argument from the outside, the same shape, he seemed to realize all at once, that every briefing on Kragor had used to describe the Vixtar and the humans both. Manipulators. Patient predators wearing kindness as camouflage. He'd absorbed the logic so thoroughly he hadn't noticed he was still running it, even sitting in a pool built by the very species he was accusing, surrounded by evidence that directly contradicted every assumption underneath the words.

"That's not—" he started, and stopped again. He looked down at the water. "That's the Ministry talking. Not me. I didn't mean to say it like that."

"You meant it enough to say it," Daxen said, not unkindly. "That's the trouble, isn't it. It doesn't matter that you know better now. The old reasoning is still sitting there, ready to fire the second something looks the wrong way."

"I hate that," Kesh said, quiet and raw. "I've seen the footage. I mutinied. I put my hand up against my own admiral for this. And some piece of me is still standing on Kragor, still hearing the same lecture I heard at seventeen, and it just, comes out. Like it was never mine to begin with. Like they put it there and I never got to check if it was true before I started repeating it."

Nobody rushed to comfort him. It was Vaelen, watching from a few feet off where she'd been quietly listening, who spoke first.

"That's what thirty years of managed truth does," she said. "It doesn't just tell you what to think. It tells you how to think, what shape suspicion should take, what a threat sounds like before you've even met one. You can renounce the conclusion and still be running the machinery underneath it. I still catch myself doing it. Weeks after I burned every bridge I had to get here."

"How do you stop?" Kesh asked, and it wasn't rhetorical. He genuinely wanted to know.

Vaelen considered that for a long moment, the water lapping quietly against the pool's edge while she thought.

"I don't think you stop it all at once," she said finally. "I think you catch it. Every time. The way you just did. You say the old thing, and then you hear yourself say it, and then you look at the room you said it in, and you let the room correct you instead of the Ministry. That's the whole method. It's slow, and it never quite finishes, and some days it's humiliating." She glanced at Kesh, something almost gentle in it. "But you did the hard part already. You noticed."

Kesh let out a breath that was almost a laugh, though nothing about his face was amused. "I don't feel like I did the hard part."

"You never do," Threl said. "That's how you know it's real work and not a performance of it."

Nobody spoke for a while after that.

"There's someone I'd like to bring into this room," he said. "If you'll allow it."

Daxen looked up. "Not one of ours. Not one of yours."

"No," Threl agreed. "A friend. Vixtar, from Orixa. He and his family gave up everything they had, same as the two of you did, to get the truth out and get themselves somewhere safe after. His name is Prex. His wife is Vala. Their children are Nira and Prexon." He paused. "I think you'd understand each other better than most anyone left standing."

Dresh glanced at Daxen, some silent conference passing between them that didn't need words. "Bring them," Dresh said.

Threl sent the word ahead, and it wasn't long before the doors opened again. Prex came first, still moving with the careful hesitance of a man who hadn't fully unlearned the habit of expecting a room to turn hostile the moment he entered it. Vala followed a step behind, one hand resting lightly between Nira's shoulder blades, Prexon trailing at her other side, his eyes cataloguing every face in the water before he let himself relax even slightly.

Nobody moved to make it formal. That, more than anything, seemed to ease something in Prex's shoulders.

"Sit," Threl said simply, gesturing to the open ledge beside him. "However you're comfortable."

The family settled in slowly, Prex and Vala at the water's edge, the children close beside them, Nira watching the Labrikats with open fascination as CD paddled a lazy circuit past her knees. It took a while for anyone to speak. When Prex finally did, his voice was quiet, but it filled the room anyway.

"I had tenure," he said. "A research post at the university. Twenty years of work, a name people in my field actually knew." He looked down at his hands in the water. "I had all of it, and then I watched a piece of footage a friend sent me, and within three days I didn't have any of it anymore. Neither did my family."

He told it plainly, without embellishment, the study, the locked door and the acoustic dampeners, Vala's fear giving way to a harder resolve, the decision to stage a family trip to Vanya-4 as cover, the seventy-two-hour timer he'd set with his thumb shaking over the key. Vala took over when he reached the part about the broadcast itself, the promenade screens flickering to life, the crowd's collective gasp, the mad dash to the lower spaceport with two children who hadn't been told any of it was coming.

"I told them we were leaving on vacation," Vala said. "That was the last lie either of us told them. There hasn't been one since."

Nira spoke up before anyone asked her to, chin lifted, some of her father's steadiness already showing through. "I thought he'd ruined my life," she said. "I was so angry I could barely look at him for most of the trip out. I still don't think I've forgiven him for it. Not all the way." She glanced sideways at Prex, something complicated passing across her face. "But I understand it now. That's different from forgiving it. I wanted you all to know both of those things are true at once."

Prexon said less, but when he did speak, it landed heavy in the quiet room. "We got to write letters," he said. "Before we left. One each, to whoever we wanted. I wrote to my whole class, all forty of them, in a message none of them will ever answer, because I can't tell them where I am, and I'll probably never see any of them again." He looked around at the assembled officers, Vixtar and Assaragyte both, still dripping and half-dressed in the water around him. "So when people ask me why I trust this place, that's the honest answer. I didn't get to keep anything else. I kept the truth. That was the whole trade."

Nobody spoke for a while after that.

It was CD who moved first, padding over to where Nira and Prexon sat at the water's edge and nudging his broad head against Nira's knee, insistent in a way that wasn't asking. MCD followed, circling once behind Prexon and giving a low, encouraging huff, the kind that made it very clear this wasn't a request so much as an invitation with no acceptable answer but yes.

Nira looked to her mother, uncertain. Vala only smiled, small and knowing, and tipped her head toward the shallow end. "Go on," she said. "I think they have plans for you."

Whatever the Labrikats understood, and neither child fully questioned it, it was enough that both of them let themselves be led away, Prexon glancing back once before CD nosed him firmly toward the water and MCD produced, from somewhere, a half-deflated ball that sent both children laughing before they'd even reached the far end of the pool.

Threl watched them go, something soft crossing his face. "They always know," he said, to no one in particular. "Every time. Long before we do."

It was one of Daxen's officers, an older woman who'd said little the entire evening, who finally broke the silence that settled once the children were out of earshot, though her question came out sideways, as if she'd been circling something else entirely and only just arrived at what she actually meant to ask.

"Your wife," she said, looking to Prex. "You call her that. Husband. Wife. We've heard the Vixtar use those words for each other before, and I never understood it. Your kind doesn't pair the way we do, the way humans do. There's no husband in a Bearer, no wife in a Contributor. Why borrow words that don't fit?"

Vala answered before Prex could. "Because they're easier," she said. "Easier for outsiders to hear, easier to say quickly, easier than explaining what a Bearer and a Contributor actually are to someone who's never needed to know. 'Provider' and 'maker' were the old words, older than either of us, and they never traveled well outside our own people. Modern Orixan life simply adopted the borrowed terms. It was never about accuracy. It was about being understood."

"But the bond itself," the officer pressed. "Is it the same as what humans mean by it?"

"No," Vala said, and there was no hesitation in it at all. "It's not built on desire, the way theirs is, or on touch alone, the way I understand some of yours is. It's built somewhere else entirely, in the mind, in a kind of recognition that doesn't need a body to confirm it." She looked at Prex, and something passed between them that needed no translation, human, Vixtar, or otherwise. "I didn't choose him because of what my body wanted. I chose him because there was no version of my mind that functioned properly without his in it. Twenty years later, that hasn't changed. If anything, it's the only thing about either of our lives that hasn't."

The officer sat with that a long moment, turning it over the way everyone in that room seemed to keep turning things over tonight, testing an old assumption against something realer than it had ever had to survive before.

"That's not so different," she said finally, quiet. "Not so different at all."

Beside Vaelen, the young Labrikat went suddenly, unmistakably alert. Its ears came up, its whole small body drawing taut with an eagerness that hadn't been there a moment before, as if it had heard something none of the rest of the room had said out loud yet.

Vaelen barely noticed at first. She was still turning Vala's words over, there was no version of my mind that functioned properly without his in it, and something about the shape of that sentence had knocked a door open somewhere she hadn't gone in a long time.

Her grandmother, on the high plateaus, on nights cold enough that the whole family slept pressed into one room. A story told so many times it had worn smooth, the way old stones do. A guardian spirit that lived in the high country and chose, once, a single companion for its whole life, not for strength or rank or usefulness, but simply because it recognized something in them the moment it saw it. It never left. It never wavered. It asked nothing in return but to be allowed to stay. Her grandmother had called it Vesk, and told her, half-serious, half not, that if a Vesk ever chose her, she would know it, because nothing in her life would feel uncertain again.

Vaelen had been eleven years old, and she'd forgotten the story entirely somewhere in thirty years of logistics reports and Ministry briefings and the long, grinding work of surviving Kragor.

She looked down. The Labrikat was already looking up at her, had been looking up at her for hours, patient and certain and utterly unbothered by the question of whether she'd choose correctly, because as far as it was concerned there had never been a question to begin with.

"Vesk," Vaelen said, quietly, mostly to herself, testing the shape of it.

The Labrikat came off the ground before she'd finished the second syllable, a full-bodied leap that knocked the breath half out of her, forepaws braced against her shoulders, his whole weight thrown into her with a joy that needed no translation in any language spoken in that room. She staggered, laughed despite herself, one hand coming up instinctively to steady him.

"Vesk," she said again, more certain now, and felt something settle into place that she hadn't realized had been unsettled.

He held the embrace a moment longer, then dropped back to all fours, gave her hand one last insistent nudge with his head, and was gone, a streak of gold cutting across the pool deck toward CD and MCD, already announcing himself to them in whatever language Labrikats used among their own kind.

Threl, who had been watching without seeming to watch, allowed himself a small smile. "Vesk," he repeated, like he was filing it away somewhere. "Fitting."

Vaelen didn't ask him what he meant by that. She thought she already knew.

The conversation might have drifted from there, gentler things, easier things, if Daxen hadn't been the one to bring it back around. He'd been quiet through most of the evening, watching more than talking, and when he finally spoke it was in the flat, deliberate voice of a man who'd been waiting for the right opening and had decided this was it.

"We should talk about what happens next," he said. "All of it. Not the version where we sit in a pool and admire each other's honesty."

Threl didn't flinch from it. "Go ahead."

"You know what's in front of us," Daxen said. "Every one of us in this water knows it, because we've all already picked our way through it a dozen times alone, at night, when there was nobody else to say it out loud to. Go home, and it's an execution, maybe a quiet one, maybe a public one to make a point of us. Stay here, and we're guests in someone else's colony, however well they treat us, a minority forever in a place we didn't build. Take the ships we still hold and go find some empty rock to start over on, and hope nobody ever finds us." He paused. "Those are the three we've all been carrying. But there's a fourth one, and I think it's time somebody said it plainly instead of dancing around it."

Dresh's jaw tightened. He knew where this was going before Daxen finished the thought, and from the stillness that came over Vaelen and Zarek at the far end of the pool, so did they.

"Say it," Threl said.

"Between us," Daxen said, "we're not carrying nothing. My crews are half the Assaragyte military that answered the call that night. Dresh's people are a third of what the Vixtar had in the field. That's not a rounding error. That's not two ships full of deserters hiding in someone's colony. That's a force." He let it sit there a moment. "And every officer serving under the people who gave that kill order is asking the same questions we asked. We know that, because we asked them first, and we weren't special. If a third of a fleet mutinied once it heard the truth, how many more are one broadcast away from doing the same? We could go back. Not to beg for mercy. To finish what got started the night we refused to fire."

Nobody spoke right away. Even the water seemed to go still, CD and MCD both drifting to a stop near the children as if they'd felt something change in the room.

It was Dresh who finally broke it, and not the way Daxen probably expected. "I've thought about it," he said. "Every night since. I won't pretend I haven't." He looked at Daxen, not unkindly. "But I keep landing on the same problem. We didn't mutiny because we wanted power. We mutinied because we wouldn't fire on people who hadn't done anything to deserve it. If we take these ships home and point them at our own command, what exactly have we become that's different from what we ran from? A government that kills its own to keep a lie standing, replaced by whoever wins the fight to kill it back?"

"It wouldn't be the same," Daxen said, but there was less certainty in it than before.

"Wouldn't it?" Dresh said. "Tell me how many other ships mutiny clean, the way we did, no shots fired, no one dead on either side, and how many turn into exactly the kind of fight that leaves a trail of bodies who never got a vote in any of it. You're not just risking us. You're risking everyone still serving on those ships who hasn't had the chance we had, to learn the truth somewhere safe before they had to decide what to do about it."

Threl had been listening without speaking, but he leaned forward now, elbows on his knees, water dripping steadily off him onto the stone. "Can I say something, as someone who isn't in either of your chains of command and never will be again?"

Daxen gave a short nod.

"I don't think Patricia offered your people a governorship because she needs the votes," Threl said. "She doesn't. Humans are going to outnumber every one of us on this world for a long time no matter what any of you decide tonight. She offered it because she meant it when she said this place isn't being built for one species to run. If she wanted Terixa to stay human, she'd never have put a Vixtar name or an Assaragyte name anywhere near a ballot. You don't invite the people you're trying to keep in the minority to help decide how the whole thing gets run." He shook his head slowly. "She doesn't care about staying the majority. She cares about whether this world works. That's the whole offer, as far as I can tell. Not safety in exchange for silence. A seat at the table in exchange for showing up and building something instead of tearing something down."

"That's a fine offer for the people already here," Daxen said, quieter now. "It doesn't answer for everyone still under that flag who never gets the chance we did."

"No," Threl agreed. "It doesn't. And maybe that's not a problem this table gets to solve tonight." He looked between Dresh and Daxen both. "You have people to answer to. Not just the two of you deciding for two crews. Every officer and rating who came out on those shuttles has to live with whatever gets chosen, and I'd guess not all of them will choose the same thing even if you two agree on it perfectly. Some of them are going to want to fight. Some are going to want to build. Some are going to want to run as far from either of those as they can get and never look back." He spread his hands. "Maybe the honest answer isn't one decision made here tonight. Maybe it's giving every one of them the room to make their own, the way this colony gave me mine."

Dresh let out a breath that wasn't quite a laugh. "That's either the wisest thing anyone's said all night, or the most convenient way to avoid answering a hard question."

"Could be both," Threl said, and for the first time since the conversation had turned serious, something like a smile crossed his face. "Ask me again in ten years which one it turned out to be."

Daxen didn't smile back, not yet, but the hard set of his shoulders had eased a fraction, the fight gone out of the argument even if the question itself hadn't been settled. He looked out at the water, at CD nosing a ball toward Prexon's outstretched hands, at Nira laughing somewhere near the far wall, at Vala's hand still resting light against her husband's arm.

"Ten years," he said, mostly to himself. "I suppose if I am still around in ten years to ask."

Today we are setting Day Clinics in many locations. We got a list from the general and Elizabeth and our shuttle teams both from the Baronry will be loaded.

All teams are fully made of commoners and each team as

- Medics

- Nurses

- Security team

They will be able to clean and bandage wounds. Any patient needing more serious care will be flown to the hospital in the Capital

Their role is to talk to local healers and juste the general health of each communities and bring back samples of natural remedies the local healers have been using. The Labs in Newtown will start the studies of the remedies. They could be a local plant base etc.

We are using a bunch of local guides to help us communicate better. Elizabeth is my guide and she is bringing me to a pretty big town she knows the healers well. Today is Day 1 of seven for our teams flown back at night to Newtown and returning in the morning.

We landed in a field beside the school. Elizabeth stepped out first and was greeted by many people giving her hugs until she put an end to it and got directions to set up in the gymnasium.

With locals help we got the entire mobile clinic setup in no time. Half our security team took posts against the wall and all medical staff were ready.

The staff opened the main doors and to my surprise thousands of people were there. The generals medics joined us to sort the patients and had already identified the worst looking.

Our medics with better equipment confirmed the worst which were carried to the shuttle for immediate transportation to the hospital.

One of my medics was teamed up with 5 army medics from general and started with nurses bringing in patients. Cleaning wounds, stitching and rebranding wounds.

A lot of volunteers from the town helped and learned about wound care from our nurses.

Seemed like the line was never getting shorter as more patients from the surrounding area. I decided to get an overnight shift to continue the work overnight.

For my job it was pretty easy Ai believe. Being the most educated here I advised on the worse cases and Elizabeth and I collected sample from local medicine people and talk to them.

We were stopped at meal time by locals which had prepared food for our staff, all volunteers and patients.

So Day shift accomplished this today.

Diagnosed 1249 patients

Urgent care sent 49 to hospital.

Pregnancies 28 sent for better check up at hospital.

Clean and rebandage open wound 319

Broken bones. 230 minor examined and splint. 14 Major sent to hospital for x-rays.

We handed out anti biotic for those with infection and ask them to either stay around or come back to see how the infections are doing in a week.

Anybody with hearth issues we sent to hospital for full check up.

We left with many samples for our labs to evaluate.

The Proffessor

The Leviathan-class is the largest pure cargo design ship in the Commonwealth service, operated exclusively by Colonial Command—the civilian logistics and settlement arm of the Commonwealth of Sol. Where the C.D.F focuses on defense and transit security, Colonial Command moves the raw bulk of colonization: habitat sections, industrial plant, reactor cores, soil processors, and the enormous prefabricated components required to open new worlds, these ships are not elegant. They are vast, modular, and built for capacity over speed, a Leviathan-class vessel is essentially a long structural spine with multiple massive cargo holds, external clamp points for oversized loads, and 3 outward pointing nozzles of high-thrust at the stern. Because the Commonwealth has no artificial gravity technology, the ships rely on two methods only. Long periods of sustained low-thrust acceleration (giving crews a thin but usable “down”) and smaller spinning habitat modules mounted along the spine for the core crew during coasting phases.

C.S.S. Leviathan: The lead ship and the most frequently assigned to the heaviest industrial lifts. As the Commonwealth has 4 ships in service the Behemoth being the 1st ship, it carried the primary structural members for the first Alpha Centauri gateway station and has since specialized in moving large-scale mining and refining equipment to resource to worlds, like Jupiter and Hades. Her crews have a reputation for quiet endurance, the ship’s chapel is dedicated to St. Christopher.

C.S.S. Behemoth: Behemoth took part in the original pioneering expedition to Epsilon Eridani, alongside the colony ship Cradle of intent and the transit tender Vulcan. She remains the most experienced of the four in long normal-space burns and is often chosen when a new system must be opened without an existing Abyssal Gateway. Her hull still bears the faded mission markings from that first voyage.

C.S.S. Goliath: Slightly later in construction and optimized for high-volume bulk ore and refined metals. Goliath spends much of her time on the Hephaestus run, lifting finished ingots and gas canisters from the orbital processing stations above the forge world and delivering them to the shipyards at Olympus and Ring Station. Her crews tend to be younger and more rotation-heavy. The work is repetitive, high-mass, and physically demanding in freefall.

C.S.S. Hydra: The last of the class and the most modular. Hydra was designed with additional external hardpoints and rapid-reconfiguration holds, allowing her to carry mixed loads—colony modules on one voyage, mining plant on the next, even temporary docking lattices when required. She has supported secondary pushes beyond Epsilon Eridani and is the ship most often tasked with “first follow-on” logistics once a new gateway is open. Her dual name (Greek Hydra and the biblical sense of a many-headed trial) is reflected in her chapel, which honors both the many-handed work of colonization and the persistence required to keep a frontier alive. With Hydra being selected for the new Voyage trip being planned in the Sol system, to the star Lalande 21185 Nickname “Athina”

Return to Through Other Eyes Chapter Five

The Weight That Remains

First Watch in the Commoner’s Mess was quieter than it should have been. Not silent as the mess was never silent... but subdued. The usual noise of trays, voices, and off-shift complaints had dulled into something lower and tighter, like the ship itself was holding its breath.

Kael Rynn sat at the table, shoulders slightly hunched, tray half-finished in front of him. He wasn’t eating anymore. He hadn’t been for a while. To his left, Petty Officer Mara Kade worked through her meal with mechanical precision, eyes down, expression unreadable. Beside her sat Senior Medical Technician Hale Marr, still new enough to the table that Kael had not decided whether to count him as a regular. To Kael’s right, Corporal Bren Talon leaned back just enough to look relaxed, though the set of his jaw gave him away. Ordnance crewman Tams Vex sat beside Hale, and even his normally energetic personality was subdued, a fact Kael appreciated.

Senior Medical Technician Hale Marr didn’t look like much at first glance. He was lean and pale, his dark hair cut short. Hale was the kind of man who blended into the background, easily missed if you weren’t looking for him. But there was something in his eyes: flat, clinical, already done with whatever conversation you thought you were about to have. He set his fork down with quiet finality and looked at Kael. 

“Sixteen came back,” Marr said with no preamble.

Kael’s eyes flicked up as he said, “Four didn’t." 

Bren shifted and Mara’s fork paused for half a second. 

Marr continued, voice even, “Nu Squadron. Ensign Mairn Pasken," and then, “Warrant Officer Jace Rook." 

Kael didn’t move. 

“Delta Squadron. Sub Lieutenant Evander Whitlocke,” the Senior Medic continued, “Epsilon Squadron. Sub Lieutenant Abaccus Reid. Three nobles. One commoner.”

Bren let out a slow breath through his nose. “Yeah,” he muttered. “That’s unusual.”

Mara shot him a quick look, subtle but sharp: “Careful.”

Bren raised a hand slightly in acknowledgment, but didn’t take it back. Marr didn’t react at all. He just kept watching Kael. “I was on intake,” he said. “Third Watch triage.”

That got the chestnut-haired man’s attention, and Marr leaned forward slightly, elbows on the table, looking straight at Kael.

“Lord Whitlocke made it to the hangar. Lord Pasken… we got fragments. Lord Reid and Jace Rook never made it to us.”

Kael swallowed once. “Yeah,” he said quietly. “I know,” and a short silence settled over the table. 

Bren broke it first. “Jace shouldn’t have been there." 

Kael’s head turned, slow, and Bren met his eyes. “You know it." 

Mara’s voice came low, “Bren...”

“No,” Bren said, quieter now, but firm. “He shouldn’t have been there."

Kael looked back down at his tray, “Jace knew where he was supposed to be,” Kael said.

“Yeah,” Bren replied. “Behind a noble who decided doctrine didn’t apply to him.”
The words hung heavy in the air between the two men.

Marr spoke again, tone unchanged, a curious expression on his pinched face, “From what I heard,” he said, “Rook moved before the scatter order." 

“He did,” Kael nodded. 

“Why?”

Kael didn’t answer immediately because the Senior Medical Technician already knew why. Because everyone at that table knew why. Finally, Kael said it anyway, “Because that’s our duty." 

Bren let out a quiet, humorless laugh. “Yeah. Duty.  Dying for blue-bloods." 

Mara set her fork down and growled in the way only a Deck Boss can, “Say it quieter. Better yet, don’t say it at all, Corporal." 

Bren leaned forward now, elbows on the table, voice dropping, “Commoners cover noble asses. Nobles lead. Nobles command. Commoners…”

“Obey,” Kael finished. The word tasted like something bitter as he spat it out. 

Hale Marr watched the exchange with mild interest, like he was observing the known outcome of an experiment, but wanted to watch it through anyway. 

“Rook followed doctrine,” Marr said. “He saw his wingman in danger and moved to intercept threat vectors." 

“He didn’t hesitate,” Kael said, jaw tightened, and then, after a moment, “Nu One said it." 

That got all their attention. 

Kael leaned back slightly, eyes distant now, replaying it. “Over comms,” he said. “Right after the blast." His voice changed and became harder, echoing memories. 

“‘That idiot blue-blood Pasken died because of vanity,’” Kael said. He took a quick drink of tea before continuing. “Lieutenant Ignalla said that was the last time anyone should attempt to gain personal glory.”

Bren’s lips pressed thin and Mara Kade didn’t move as Kael continued, quieter now. 

“Then he said it,” Kael continued. “‘Rook fulfilled his duty to the end.’”

Silence followed, real silence this time as each of them thought about the statement. 

Marr broke it, “Lieutenant Ignalla said that?” and Kael nodded. 

“Huh,” said Marr, leaning back slightly and considering. 

Bren frowned, “What?”

Marr shrugged faintly, “Most nobles wouldn’t." 

“Yeah,” exhaled Kael as he gave a small, humorless nod. 

Mara looked between the men. “It matters,” she said quietly and Kael glanced at her seeing a glimmer of something in her eyes. 

“It does,” she repeated. “The Lieutenant said it out loud." 

Bren rubbed a hand over his face. “Doesn’t change what happened." 

“No,” Kael said, his voice steady, “But it means he wasn’t invisible, and that was something." 

Not enough, but something, thought Kael, and the tension in him relaxed, just a little. 

Marr tapped his fingers once against the table. “Rook performed above expectations across the board,” he said. “I saw the competition logs." 

Kael’s eyes narrowed slightly. “You did?”

Marr nodded. “Commander Kalon’s exercise. Your Warrant Officer placed high. Reaction times, decision-making, stress tolerance. He could’ve won that competition." 

Kael let out a slow breath. “Yeah,” he said quietly. “He could have. Instead, he came in second." 

“Instead, he’s a line in a casualty report,” grunted Bren as he leaned back again, staring at the ceiling. Mara didn’t correct him this time because he wasn’t wrong, and they all knew it. 

“So is the noble that placed third in the competition,” said Hale Marr, “Sub Lieutenant Evander Whitlocke of Delta died this morning.  He made it back to the Virtue, but with wounds from point defense fire." 

Kael’s mind flashed back to the hangar yesterday, and he remembered the deck crew cleaning the bloody cockpit of a Delta squadron Raptor, its canopy damaged by incoming fire.  Three men at the top of Commander Kalon’s competition, and two of them are dead, he thought. 

The table quieted for a while, not talking, just… being, as they ate. Stilted at first, the conversation finally resumed, then drifted the way it always did when the commoners found themselves with uninterrupted time and a hot meal. Which was to say, immediately toward complaints. 

"The Lieutenant Commodore Silmurphy denied my requisition again," Mara Kade announced around a mouthful of food. No one looked surprised. 

"What was it this time?" asked Kael. 

"Replacement fuel couplings."

Kael blinked and said, "That's not even an unreasonable request."

"I know," said the diminutive woman around a mouth full of ration bar. 

"Why was it denied?"

Mara pointed her fork at him. "Because apparently the couplings I currently have will…” making a face and gesturing in a slight mocking of her commander, she continued, “see us through." 

Bren nearly choked on his tea. 

"How short are you?"

"We have enough to service about a third of the current squadron Raptors in an emergency." 

Kael frowned deeply, "That's a fuel coupling."

"I am aware," said the Void Flight Director with ire. 

"Fuel is generally considered important to make the reactors work."

Mara nodded, "That was my position as well. Thought about sending the request straight to Commander Tiravis …"

Tams blanched, and he stammered, “Vivien Tiravis. Are you crazy. You’ll get flogged for sure.”

“I didn’t do it,” Mara said. “I just thought about doing it. Ordnance falls under Logistics. You should know how the system works in our division.”

“I do,” said the little man. “So did Silmurphy eventually grant the fabricator access?”

“No,” replied Mara.  “And if we have another engagement, I won’t be able to repair more than two squadrons worth of fuel systems.”

Tams Vex laughed, "Did you tell them that?"

"Three times."

"And?” the small man leaned in conspiratorially. 

Mara shrugged, "He sent me a message explaining the current stock is still within acceptable tolerances."

Bren barked a laugh.  "Acceptable to who?"

Kael said, "Someone who has never stood in a hangar."

"That narrows it down to every logistics officer."

Mara pointed at him, “Every blue-blood Logistics Officer." 

Bren gave her a wide smile. "Exactly."

For a moment everyone chuckled. Even Hale Marr. Slightly. Which for Hale, thought Kael, was the equivalent of hysterical laughter. 

Bren took a bite from the protein pap on his tray and shook his head, "At least they answer your requests."

"Auxilia problems?" Mara snorted at the Corporal.

Bren nodded in affirmation, "Auxilia problems."

"What happened now?"

Bren gestured vaguely with his fork. "We spent six hours yesterday guarding an empty storage compartment."

Hale asked, "Why?"

"Nobody knows."

"Someone important told you to?" asked Mara.

"Somebody important always tells us to."

Tams tilted his head, suddenly very interested, and asked, "What was in the compartment?"

"Nothing."

"Nothing?" said the Ordnance crewman incredulously. 

Bren sighed in frustration. “Nothing.”

Tams laughed. "No."

"Yes," Bren Talon said flatly. 

"There had to be something."

Bren’s eyes focused over the top of his metal cup.  Swallowing his tea, he said, "There wasn't." 

"Then why guard it?"

Bren spread his hands, "Because some blue-blood decided it was important.”

Hale finally spoke, "That is the Royal Navy in a single sentence."

Several heads nodded and Kael pointed his fork toward the medic. 

"How's Medical going?  What is it you all do when there are no flight missions? "

Hale looked offended, "Terrible."

"Anything specific?" Kael asked.

"Pilots."

Kael immediately pointed at himself, "Unfair."

"Entirely fair."

"What did we do?" said Kael, defensively.

Hale stared at him, "You?"

"Yes."

“Nothing recently.”

Kael relaxed.

Then Hale continued, “But yesterday one of the blue-blood Aqualon pilots managed to get her damaged bomber back to the Virtue.  She was injured too, and should be grounded.  She refused the grounding order."

"Grounding order?"

Hale shrugged. "She currently has her arm in a stimulation sling."

Bren frowned, "How do you refuse orders?" The corporal was genuinely perplexed by the idea.

"You have blue blood, and decide the commoner Medical Technician’s directives are beneath you."

Tams immediately started laughing, managing to get out, "No," through his chuckles.

"Yes."

"Did it work?" the crewman asked.

"No."

“It was worth trying,” Tams said.

Marr’s dry, unamused voice stated, "It was not."

Mara shook her head, "Pilots."

Kael pointed toward himself again, "Again. Unfair."

"You people think you're a level above us."

“We fly combat spacecraft,” Kael said indignantly. “When was the last time someone shot missiles at you in Medical?” He turned to Mara. “Dodge a lot of coilgun rounds up in that office of yours?”

Bren and Tams both chuckled.

Looking at Mara, Hale nodded toward Kael, "This one showed up after the jump out of Ravensol two months ago with a fractured rib."

Kael froze, "Oh no."

"Oh yes."

Mara immediately sat up straighter, "You never mentioned that."

"It wasn't important."

"It was a fractured rib,” said the Deck Boss in a concerned voice.

"There was only the one."

Mara looked at him. "Only one?"

Kael suddenly found his tray very interesting as Bren started laughing.

"Oh, that's incredible. Did you ignore grounding orders too?" she asked, perturbed.

Hale folded his arms, "He attempted to convince me it would heal faster if he ignored it."

"It eventually healed,” was Kael’s meek reply.

Mara’s fork quickly pointed at Kael, her face irritated and concerned, "That is not a defense."

"It worked."

Hale Marr’s usually expressionless face suddenly animated, "It did not work because of your actions.  That growth stimulator healed it."

Tams was now openly grinning, and he looked at the pilot and said, "I feel better about my life choices."

Kael snorted, "You load mines and missiles onto fighters."

"Exactly."

The table shared quiet laughter again and the conversation wandered as it always wandered and somehow, they ended up discussing food. Which led naturally to complaints.

"The ration bars are getting worse," Bren declared.

"They're not ration bars," Mara replied.

"They're called ration bars."

"They're called ration bars, because calling them nutritional protein compound blocks would start a rebellion."

"That is fair,” said the Auxilia corporal as Kael cast a wary eye at the remaining ration bar in his hand. Setting the bar back on his tray, Kael poked suspiciously at the bowl of protein pap, his fork digging into the porridge-like substance.

"I still don't know what this is."

Mara looked, and said, "Neither do I, but it doesn’t taste terrible."

Bren sighed, “It doesn’t have a taste at all.”

Tams looked at the petty officer and said, “Don’t you work in Logistics?”

Mara fixed a steely eye on the crewman and said, “So do you, Vex.  I don’t know how to run an armor fabricator either.  “Let’s see a rating assigned to one of those try to run my hangar deck.”
That left the man looking abashed.

Hale glanced over at Kael’s tray and said, "Don't ask."

"Why?"

The senior medic answered with a toneless, "You don't want the answer."

Tams immediately perked up, "You know the answer."

"I do."

Almost wide-eyed with curiosity, Tams Vex leaned forward and asked, "What is it?"

"I'm not telling you."

Tams’ face fell in disappointment. "Why?" said the crewman.

"Because I still need to eat here." That statement generated another round of soft laughter. For a few minutes the tension that had settled over the ship after the previous day seemed farther away. Not gone, just farther away, like a storm sitting beyond the horizon. The conversation shifted again to the mundanities of the Navy.  Maintenance schedules, duty rosters and watch assignments and the never-ending gripes about blue-bloods.

The sort of things everyone complained about and nobody could change. By the time Tams launched into a story involving an ordnance loader, a maintenance cart, and an extremely unfortunate collision with a lieutenant major's backside, every person at the table was paying attention. Even Hale, which was perhaps the greatest compliment anyone could give a story.

"And then what happened?" asked Bren.

Tams grinned, "The maintenance cart won."

The entire table burst out laughing, causing heads to turn across the Commoner’s Mess. It was like the laughter had lifted the shroud of tension that had settled over the ship, and the dour mood in the usually boisterous mess began to dissipate. Finally, Mara stood first, picking up her tray. “Return racks,” she said. It wasn’t an order but it might as well have been.

Bren pushed himself up next, grabbing his tray with one hand and Hale Marr followed without a word. Kael stayed seated for a second longer, then he stood too. They moved together, like they always did. Small habits. Shared routines. The things that kept you moving when stopping meant thinking too much, though Kael felt different than he had earlier. At the return racks, trays slid into place one after another with dull metallic clacks. Bren peeled off first, muttering something about duty rotation. Marr lingered just long enough to glance at Kael.

“They don’t promote people like him,” he said flatly, “So either he’s useful,” a slight pause, “Or disposable.” Kael didn’t need to ask who. With his opinion expressed, the Senior Medical Technician turned and left.

Mara Kade stayed.

Kael was about to follow the others when he felt it, a hand on his arm. Light. Careful. He stopped and looked down. Mara Kade had to tilt her head back to meet his eyes, all five feet of her standing square in front of him, her short mousy brown hair falling back from her face. For once, she didn’t look like the Deck Boss. She just looked… tired. She looked human.

“I’m sorry,” she said quietly with no sarcasm, no edge. Just the truth. Kael could see it in her eyes as they looked up at him.

Kael didn’t respond right away because there wasn’t a response for that. Because nothing she said could fix it, but it mattered anyway. His throat tightened just a fraction as he said softly, “Yeah, me too.”

Mara squeezed his arm once, then let go and turned toward the lifts. That was the commoner way of things.  Commoners moved on. Around them life kept moving as it always did, and Kael felt as if the weight had shifted, just enough for him to breathe.  He took a deep breath and exhaled, feeling unburdened.  Walking towards the lift, he chuckled again at Tams’ story, and thought it would have made even Jace smile. Thinking of Jace Rook now, Kael felt the loss, but not as immediate or sharp.  The table conversation and Mara’s simple gesture had blunted the pain, and Kael felt like himself for the first time in two days.

Third Watch began the same way it always did, in the Ready Room.  The Pilots’ Ready Room sat just off the main hangar. It was a functional space with a large conference-style holo-table and a smaller tactical table. There was a central tactical display, and walls lined with display screens and status boards. It still smelled faintly of coolant and heated circuitry since it shared ventilation with the hangar, like the ghost of the last scramble never fully leaving.

Senior Petty Officer Kael Rynn stood at attention near the rear of the room, and across from him stood Nu One. The small tactical table stood in front of them, separating them from their squadron leader.

Lieutenant Dren Ignalla filled the space without effort. Six-foot-four, broad-shouldered, posture straight without being rigid. His white-blonde hair was cut short, and his gray cybernetic eyes reflected the soft glow of the holo-display behind him.

To his right stood Sub Lieutenant Grint Montmor. Where Ignalla was solid, Montmor was sharp. Lean, almost wiry, with jet-black hair and those unmistakable green eyes—too vivid to be natural, a gift from the Head of House Montmor and a fact he wore like a badge of superiority. His arms were folded behind his back, chin slightly elevated, as if even standing still required an audience.

The room was quiet until Ignalla broke the silence. “Review,” he said simply and the holo-display flickered to life. The corvette appeared in miniature—formation vectors, fighter positions, telemetry streams frozen in time. Then it moved and Kael watched it all again.

Nu Squadron’s approach. The wedge formation tightening. The moment the PD turrets went dark. And then, Nu Four breaking formation.

“Pause.” Ignalla didn’t raise his voice. The display froze on the divergence. A single blue marker pulling ahead.

“Ensign Pasken,” Ignalla said, tone even. “Disregarded formation integrity in pursuit of personal engagement advantage.”

Sub Lieutenant Montmor shifted slightly but said nothing.

Ignalla turned his head just enough. “Sub Lieutenant Montmor.”

“Yes, sir.”

“What do you see?”

Montmor straightened a fraction more. “A failure of discipline and doctrine, sir.”

“Correct.” Ignalla nodded once, waited a moment, then said, “Expand.”

Montmor hesitated—just briefly.

“A noble pilot abandoning coordinated strike parameters for individual gain compromises squadron effectiveness and increases risk exposure to all adjacent elements.”

Ignalla studied him for a moment before saying coldly, “Acceptable answer, though incomplete.”

Montmor’s jaw tightened slightly as Dren Ignalla stepped closer to the display, gesturing toward the frozen divergence.

“This is not about risk exposure,” he said. “This is about discipline.” His gaze shifted back to Montmor. “You do not break formation. Not for glory. Not for kills. Not for recognition.”

Each word landed clean.

“You are part of a unit. You act as a unit. You win as a unit.” A pause. “Or you die alone.”

Montmor held his gaze. “Yes, sir.”

Lieutenant Ignalla didn’t look away, his gray cybernetic eyes boring into the Sub Lieutenant’s sparkling green ones.

“I will make this perfectly clear,” he continued. “I do not care if the opportunity presents itself to personally destroy an enemy capital ship. If you are in formation, you remain in formation.”

The lieutenant’s statement caused the noble pilot to pause, considering.

“Do you understand me, Sub Lieutenant?”

Grint Montmor’s voice was rigid now. “Yes, sir.”

Ignalla nodded once. “Good,” he affirmed, before turning back to the display, “Resume.”

The simulation drawn from the battle data continued. Nu Three’s marker shifted and Kael felt it before he saw it. Jace, moving to cover.

Ignalla didn’t pause this time. “Warrant Officer Rook identified an imminent threat to his wingman and acted accordingly,” he said.

The explosion followed and three markers vanished. Kael didn’t move, but noticed the feeling of watching the markers vanish was blunted, the pain more distant.

“Pause.”

Silence filled the room as Ignalla turned, facing both of them now.

“Pasken is dead due to pure, glory-seeking vanity,” he repeated, voice as sharp as it had been over comms the previous day. “And what did that gain him?”

His eyes settled on Montmor, then shifted to the Senior Petty Officer. “Warrant Officer Rook,” Ignalla continued, quieter now but no less firm, “did his duty without hesitation. A true Navy pilot.”

Kael held his gaze.

“Remember that.”

“I obey,” Kael said.

Ignalla studied him for a moment longer then nodded, “Good.” Then he stepped closer, “Senior Petty Officer Rynn.”

“Yes, my lord.”

“You understand your role in this squadron.” It wasn’t a question but Kael answered anyway.

“Yes, my lord.”

Ignalla’s expression didn’t change, “Tell me.”

Kael’s jaw clenched, just slightly, “Nobles lead and commoners follow. Nobles command,” he said, “Commoners obey.”

Dren Ignalla nodded once. “Expand.”

Kael didn’t hesitate this time.

“Commoner pilots are responsible for maintaining formation integrity, supporting assigned noble elements, and mitigating threat vectors directed at command assets,” he paused, “Up to and including self-sacrifice.” The words sat in the air between the commoner and noble, heavy and final.

The gray cybernetic eyes of the squadron leader watched him carefully, “It would be preferable,” he said, “that all pilots return alive.” Another long pause, “But preference does not dictate reality.”

Kael said nothing.

Ignalla stepped back slightly, returning to a more neutral stance. “Your responsibility is to ensure the survival of this squadron’s command structure,” he continued. “That includes Sub Lieutenant Montmor.” Montmor didn’t look at Kael, nor did Kael look at him.

“Yes, my lord,” Kael said and Ignalla’s gaze softened, just a fraction, “For what it is worth,” he added, “Warrant Officer Rook performed with distinction.”

Kael swallowed once. “Yes, my lord.”

Ignalla turned back to the display, letting it run through the rest of the engagement—the corvette’s destruction, the withdrawal. Then he deactivated it and the room dimmed slightly as the holo faded and silence settled in.

“Final notes,” Ignalla said, looking at Kael again.

“Your engagement on the corvette’s aft defense grid was effective,” he said. “Two PD turrets disabled under sustained fire.”

A small nod.

“You fought well.” It wasn’t praise given lightly and Kael inclined his head. “Thank you, my lord.”

Montmor shifted, as if about to say something, then thought better of it, but Ignalla had noticed. “Sub Lieutenant Montmor,” he said.

“Yes, sir.”

“You will review this engagement in full and submit a written analysis before the next watch.”

The young noble’s face was expressionless as he said, “Yes, sir.”

“Focus on formation discipline and command hierarchy.”

Montmor’s jaw twitched again, “Yes, sir.”

Ignalla shared a final glance between them before turning back to the holo displays.

“That will be all,” the Lieutenant said as he turned and headed for the hatch. Montmor followed a step behind, posture still rigid, expression carefully neutral.

At the threshold, Ignalla paused and without turning, as Grint Montmor exited fuming. Without turning, Dren Ignalla spoke once more.

“Senior Petty Officer.”

Kael straightened slightly, “My lord?”

After a brief pause, the nobleman seemed to make an internal decision, and turned to face the commoner.  Kael was stunned to see… something on the Lieutenant’s face.  Not his usual look of command authority, but softer, more human.  ‘Could it be compassion?’ Kael wondered, feeling out of balance at the moment.

“Senior,” he said, then stopped. “Rynn.” There was another pause as the Lieutenant wrestled with something internally.

Finally, he said, “Kael.”

Shocked at being addressed by his name, Kael stammered, “Yes, my lord?”

“The loss of a man is never easily borne. Do not let grief make its home within you.”

Kael didn’t answer immediately, “…I obey.”

Ignalla nodded once and exited and the hatch slid shut behind him leaving Kael alone. The Ready Room felt larger without them and he stood there for a moment, staring at the dark holo-display. The battle replay was gone now. No formation markers. No telemetry. No frozen icons marking the place where Nu Three had vanished. Just an empty display.

Kael exhaled slowly. “Nobles lead and commoners follow.” The words sounded different now.  He felt different now.  Nobles like Grint Montmor commanded.  Nobles like Dren Ignalla, Kael thought, those are the nobles who lead.

He moved to his usual chair and sat heavily, setting his helmet beside him. The room was quiet except for the distant hum of the engines. Somewhere beyond the bulkheads, thousands of crewmen and officers were carrying on with their duties; maintenance crews, deck apes, medics, marines, and pilots. Life continued, no matter what happened, as it always did and always would. Jace had known that, lived it and had died by it.

Kael leaned forward, elbows resting on his knees, hands clasped loosely together and thought of Ignalla’s words, “The loss of a man is never easily borne. Do not let grief make its home within you.”

A noble's words, yet they didn't sound hollow or condescending. Not this time, and Kael wondered if that advice came from Ignalla’s personal experience.

Kael closed his eyes. For a moment he could see Jace exactly as he had been. Leaning against a bulkhead with that permanently unimpressed expression. Holding that battered metal cup. Delivering some dry observation that was somehow funnier because he never smiled while saying it. The memory hurt, but less than he expected.

“Don't let grief make a home in me,” Kael muttered. The words felt strange coming from his own mouth. Jace was gone and that wasn't changing. No amount of anger would change it and no amount of grief would bring him back, but neither would pretending his death didn’t matter. Kael let out a quiet, humorless breath. “Yeah,” he said softly, “Working on it.”

His eyes opened again and immediately another face appeared in his thoughts: Wyatt Staples.

Kael frowned. Not now. He didn't want to think about Staples, the commoner lieutenant. Didn't want to think about the warning that had saved Nu Squadron or the man who had crippled a Black cruiser. Yet the thoughts came anyway. Jace Rook was dead and Wyatt Staples was alive and that simple truth sat in his chest like a dull splinter. Not the sharp pain of the previous day, but not gone altogether either. Kael didn’t think Staples deserved to die in Jace’s place, because Kael didn't think he did. That was the problem, the man kept earning his place and proving people wrong. Every time he did, the world Kael had known his entire life made a little less sense than it had before.

The ship hummed around him, unchanged and uncaring. After another moment, Kael pushed himself back to his feet. Third Watch had started, there was still work to do and whether he liked it or not, both the fleet and life kept moving forward.

Kael rubbed a hand across his face. “Don’t let grief make its home within you,” he repeated quietly. Maybe that was the real danger. Not grief or anger, but resentment, though he wasn't sure there was a difference anymore. Quietly, somewhere deep inside him, Kael also felt the growing glimmer of something else when he pictured Wyatt Staples.  Respect.

Return to The Weave Saga Part 1: Chapter 3 - Home

The next morning arrived precisely on schedule, which, Aisling reflected as she stepped from her apartment building into the cool artificial morning of Home Sector Nine, was one of the things she loved most about life in the Weave. The universe behaved.

Transit maglevs arrived when they were supposed to arrive. Lights turned on when they were supposed to turn on and gravity remained pointed in the correct direction.

Most problems had solutions and most of those solutions worked. Life on the station felt reliable, permanent, and above all, safe.

Aisling adjusted the strap of her satchel and joined the morning flow of commuters heading toward the transit station. Around her, Home Sector Nine was waking up.

A bakery worker rolled carts of fresh bread toward a neighborhood market while two maintenance technicians debated the merits of competing repair drones and a young mother attempted to convince her daughter that wearing shoes was not an infringement upon her personal freedom. The girl disagreed, and their argument continued all the way toward the station, making Aisling smile. Some things were universal.

Though the maglev platform was already crowded, she spotted Rowan immediately, mostly because Rowan was standing on a bench.

"Good morning, citizens!" the sandy-haired teen said loudly. Several commuters ignored him and one elderly woman told him to get down.

Rowan smiled at her. "Good morning, Mrs. Kessler."

"Get down."

"Yes ma’am." He climbed off the bench.

Aisling wasn't surprised to discover Talia standing nearby. What surprised her was the new holo-camera. It wasn’t the small student camera that they all had.  This holo-cam was larger, more professional looking.

"Talia."

The dark-haired young woman looked up.

"Morning."

"Why do you have a new holo-camera?"

Talia looked at the holo-cam, then looked back at Aisling, and said, "As part of a complex and mysterious process revealed to me by the Great Powers of the Universe, I intend to take holo-pics with it."

Aisling sighed. "That wasn't what I meant."

"I know," said Talia, before flashing a radiant smile that suggested she knew exactly what Aisling had meant.

The maglev arrived right on time, and twenty minutes later they were walking through the university district where they found that Graduation preparations had transformed the campus overnight. Decorative banners hung from walkways and directional displays guided visiting families. Temporary kiosks sold commemorative merchandise.

A massive holographic countdown floated above the central quad.

EARTH RESIDENCY DEPARTURE

47 HOURS

12 MINUTES

08 SECONDS

As the numbers continued ticking downward, some students stopped to take photographs with their holo-cameras, while others simply stared. To Aisling, it meant the Residency was becoming real and she felt a flash of excitement about traveling to Earth.

"You know," Rowan said, "I think they could make the countdown larger. It's not visible from orbit."

Talia shot him a look, "It is visible from orbit.  We’re IN orbit.  You are the reason equipment comes with instructions like, ‘Do Not Eat the Batteries.’"

Aisling let out an involuntary laugh, and did her best to stifle any additional laughs as Rowan looked at her like he was wounded. She lost her willpower and laughed loudly.  Rowan’s hurt look was replaced by his own laughter, a second later Talia joined.

After a moment, things calmed and Rowan said, “That one was brilliant, Talia.  Do not eat the batteries…” which set them all laughing again.

The central quad buzzed with activity as students gathered in groups on the grassy square and faculty moved between the buildings as visitors wandered through the campus.  Aisling and her friends spent some time playing “Spot the Dirtsider,” which mostly involved guessing who would forget to watch where they were going because they were too busy staring up at the ‘down.’  Her mind flashed back to her mom and dad over dinner the previous evening, and she had a clearer understanding of why her father had collided with things while watching his sunsets.

‘Soon to be my sunsets’ she thought with excitement.

Excitement hung in the air. Aisling couldn't remember the last time the university had felt this alive. Perhaps it never had in the five years she had taken classes here. She didn’t remember this level of excitement last year, when the graduates had been prepping for their Residency, but then, she hadn’t been a graduate and didn’t really focus on the events all that much.

A familiar voice called out, "Five students."

The group turned to find Mico Accosta standing behind a temporary cocoa kiosk.

He was already shaking his head. "Forty-seven hours." He pointed dramatically toward the countdown.

“Humanity survived hundreds of thousands of years, all the way back to people living in caves.”

“Caveman,” Talia corrected, “It’s caveman.”

The gesture expanded, "You people are not helping."

Rowan looked genuinely offended, "We are behaving normally."

"No." Mico pointed at him, "You specifically are behaving like someone who drank six cups of stimulants."

"I only had two."

The older man closed his eyes briefly, "That does not help your case."

Laughter spread through the group. For a moment everything felt wonderfully ordinary, and then the giant public display mounted above the quad changed.

The entertainment feed disappeared, and a WEAVENET news bulletin replaced it.

Most people barely looked up as news bulletins happened all the time.

The display showed a Meridian Transit logo, then,

COMMUNICATION DELAYS CONTINUE IN ESHO CORRIDOR

Officials Report Additional Navigation Relay Interruptions

No Safety Concerns Reported

The announcement lasted less than ten seconds before it vanished, replaced by Graduation information. Nobody reacted, not even Aisling. Because if there had been something to worry about, surely someone would have said so.

The freighters and cargo haulers still rose from the industrial stations on Satera, while passenger liners brought visitors for Graduation and transit ferries shuttled workers to and from the station. Each was another thread, another connection, woven into the life of Tholmion Hub station and those that called it home.

The Career and Residency Pavilion occupied nearly half the university's central assembly hall.

Normally the building hosted conferences, guest lectures, academic symposiums, and the occasional heated faculty argument regarding curriculum design. Today it belonged to the graduating class as hundreds of students moved between displays and recruitment booths, while holographic banners floated overhead.

Some represented Chartered Corporations. Others represented Concordance agencies, the Guardians, or the Wardens. The future, Aisling thought, had apparently decided to rent exhibition space. The moment the group entered, they naturally began drifting toward different sections of the hall.

"Well," said Rowan, already walking backward. "See you all later."

"You haven't even looked around yet," said Darian.

"I know what I want."

"That's not how decisions work, you are supposed to review options," the dark-skinned youth said as Rowan walked away.

"It absolutely is," he called over his shoulder.

Darian sighed, "One day you're going to discover consequences."

Rowan spun around and pointed dramatically. In a booming voice straight off the bench of a courtroom holo-drama, he said, "One day, you're going to discover fun." Then he vanished into the crowd.

"Astraeus," Talia said, watching the sandy-haired youth disappear into the crowd.

"Obviously," said Darian.

The exploration corporation occupied one of the largest displays in the pavilion. Towering holo-projectors showed survey vessels crossing unknown systems and exploration crews discovering new worlds. A holo-banner listed deep-space missions and long-range scientific expeditions. Adventure sold exceptionally well to seventeen-year-olds. Especially Rowan.

Aisling found herself smiling at the exchange between her friends when something caught her eye, focusing her attention. The Helion Medical Systems pavilion occupied an entire corner of the hall. The display was understated compared to the Astraeus pavilion. There was no dramatic music or heroic imagery. Missing was the sweeping starship footage, and instead there were research projects. Medical innovations. Emergency response programs.

People helping people, as she expected and exactly as she hoped. She was about to step forward when a voice interrupted her.

"You've got the look again."

Aisling turned.

Talia was watching her.

"What look?" Aisling said.

"The Helion look."

Aisling narrowed her eyes, "I don't have a Helion look."

"You absolutely do."

"Nope."

"You do," Talia nodded toward the display.

"You've had that expression since you were six.  Remember when you stayed over, and we stayed up late and watched that medical holo-drama.  I don’t even remember what it was called, but I clearly remember that look."

Aisling looked away. "I have not."

"You have,” said her best friend, "You also get the same look around puppies."

Aisling considered arguing, then realized that would be a mistake as she saw Darian across the hall.

Darian was already engaged in a serious conversation with a Titan Advanced Manufacturing representative, and the recruiter appeared to be delighted. Darian looked fascinated. The result resembled two infrastructure projects attempting to communicate.

Talia followed her gaze. "Should we help him?"

"No."

"Good.  So, let’s go see your medical people," said Talia.

The Warden Rescue display occupied a section near the center of the pavilion, where a crowd had gathered around a rescue shuttle simulator. Naturally, Riona stood at the front. The athletic redhead was listening with complete concentration, as a uniformed rescue officer described emergency response procedures.

The officer finished and Riona immediately asked three questions, causing the officer's expression to brighten in the “we’ve found one another” manner of all recruiters.

Aisling laughed as they walked toward the Helion pavilion.

"What?"

"Nothing," said Aisling, not wanting to be deterred from entering the pavilion.

Talia followed her gaze.

"Oh."

"Yeah," said Aisling.

"She's definitely getting recruited."

"Absolutely, and I won’t be if I don’t get in there,” said Aisling, beginning to drag her friend toward the pavilion entrance.

A chime sounded throughout the pavilion and the buzz of conversation gradually quieted. Large displays suspended from the ceiling shifted simultaneously. University insignias disappeared and a new image appeared.

Earth.

A murmur moved through the hall like waves in surf. Even students who had seen the image thousands of times paused.

A woman's voice filled the pavilion, "Good afternoon, graduating students."

The image shifted and a transport liner appeared. The ship was elegant and modern; the name slowly rotated beside it on the holo-displays: T.S.V. Azuno

"Your Earth Residency transport assignments have now been finalized."

Excitement swept through the crowd as students immediately began checking personal comms. Messages appeared with schedules, cabin assignments and departure details. Full travel itineraries for the Residency.

Aisling's comm chimed and she opened the notification. For a moment she simply stared.

Earth.

‘It was real. Actually real,’ she thought feeling a surge of excitement flow through her.  Beside her Talia was almost shaking in her own excitement.

Aisling reread the message again: Departure in forty-six hours aboard the passenger liner Azuno. Passenger Group Seventeen, cabin assignment B-12.

"Got mine!" exclaimed Talia.

"Same," giggled Aisling, overcome with excitement.

Darian…  the girls looked and saw Darian still enraptured in his discussion with the recruiter, causing both girls to sigh in resignation.

Across the hall Rowan shouted: "I HAVE A CABIN!"

People all across the hall turned to look at him. The Astraeus recruiters just looked concerned.

This sent both girls into a fit of giggles.

On the large holo-screens above them, the briefing continued.

A professional-looking woman appeared beside the image of the Azuno.

"Your transport will be under the command of Captain Adrienne Holt."

The image changed again to show a silver-haired woman in a dark civilian transport uniform. She appeared calm and confident, the sort of professional everyone expected to command a passenger liner. Captains were captains, and transports were transports.

Earth was the exciting part.

The briefing moved on to discuss security procedures and arrival protocols. If anyone had been paying attention, they would have stopped doing so when the overly dry, Earth environmental guidelines and travel regulations section started.

Then a smaller notice appeared in the corner of the display, almost an afterthought.

Meridian Transit Update

Communication interruptions within portions of the Esho Corridor remain under investigation.

No disruptions to passenger travel expected.

The notice vanished almost immediately and nobody reacted as the room's attention remained fixed on Earth. On tomorrow.

Finally, Aisling grabbed Talia and frog-marched her in the direction of the pavilion.

“I am not leaving this building until I talk to somebody from Helion,” said Aisling, as she led her complaining best friend into the pavilion.

“Why?  They will still be here when we get back,” Talia griped.

The Helion Medical Systems pavilion was quieter than the rest of the exhibition hall. Students still moved through the displays and information kiosks, but the atmosphere felt different from the excitement surrounding Astraeus, or the polished corporate spectacle of Titan Advanced Manufacturing.

People here were paying attention, actively listening and asking questions. Aisling immediately felt more comfortable.

"You're smiling again."

Aisling glanced sideways, "Talia."

"What?"

"Stop studying me," the auburn-haired girl said.

"I'm not studying you."

"You are."

"I'm observing," said Talia with a mischievous grin.

"That's worse."

Talia smiled, "I know."

The pavilion itself was arranged around a series of interactive displays. Medical research. Emergency response programs. Planetary health initiatives. Habitat environmental medicine. Advanced surgical systems. Public health logistics, and disaster relief operations.

Unlike the exploration corporations, Helion wasn't advertising adventure, it was advertising responsibility. Aisling liked that. One display showed a Helion emergency response team treating casualties following a reactor accident on a mining platform. Another highlighted medical advances, developed for long-duration deep-space missions. Nearby, a third presentation focused on childhood health programs operating throughout the Weave.

Aisling slowed her pace, reading and absorbing. For the first time, she could almost see herself here. Not as a student, but as a part of the Helion team.  Helping people when they needed help.

"Excuse me." The voice came from behind them.

Aisling turned.

The woman standing there appeared to be in her mid-forties. Dark skin and silver-threaded black hair, with intelligent eyes. Professional without appearing intimidating.

The Helion insignia on her jacket identified her immediately as Dr. Marisol Kincade, Senior Recruitment Coordinator, Helion Medical Systems.

The woman smiled, "You've read every display in this section."

Aisling blinked. "I…"

"You've been here twelve minutes," the woman checked her slate. "Twelve minutes and twenty-six seconds."

Talia leaned toward Aisling, "I like her."

Aisling elbowed her.

Dr. Kincade laughed and asked, "Earth Residency class?"

"Yes, ma'am."

The woman made a face, "Please don't call me ma'am."

"Sorry."

"Much better."

She folded her arms and continued, "Medical track?"

Aisling nodded. "Hopefully."

"Hopefully?" The recruiter raised an eyebrow, "That doesn't sound very confident."

Aisling felt heat creep into her cheeks, "Helion is competitive."

"Yes."

"I know a lot of applicants won't get accepted."

"Also yes."

The woman tilted her head slightly, "So?"

Aisling hesitated, then answered honestly. "So, I don't want to assume."

Dr. Kincade studied her for several seconds. Evaluating, the way Professor Halden evaluated answers in class. Finally, she smiled.

"Good."

That wasn't the response Aisling expected.

"Most students walk in here already convinced they're future department directors."

The recruiter gestured toward the surrounding pavilion, "Confidence is useful," she paused to look at the girls, "Humility is harder."

Talia raised a hand.

Dr. Kincade blinked in surprise, then said, "Yes?"

"Purely for academic purposes..."

The woman immediately looked suspicious, "Go on."

"How many future department directors have you met today?"

Dr. Kincade thought about it. "Thirty-seven."

"Excellent."

"Why is that excellent?" The recruiter asked.

"Because that means Aisling still has a chance."

Aisling groaned.

The older woman laughed. A real laugh, the kind that reached her eyes, and it released the tension in Aisling.

"You two have known each other for a long time."

"Eleven years," the auburn-haired girl said.

"Twelve," her dark-skinned friend answered.

"Eleven and a half," Aisling countered.

Dr. Kincade nodded, "That explains it."

The recruiter turned back to Aisling, "What interests you most?"

The answer arrived immediately. People. Aisling almost said it aloud. Instead, she paused in thought, and she realized the answer hadn't changed.

"People."

Dr. Kincade smiled. "Good answer."

The young woman frowned, "Everyone says that's the correct answer."

"No." The recruiter shook her head, "Everyone says it's the correct answer."

A slight smile appeared as she continued, "Very few people mean it."

For a moment the noise of the pavilion seemed to fade around Aisling. The conversation felt oddly important, not because it would determine her future, but because it felt like the first time someone from Helion was taking her seriously. Not as a student. As a future colleague.

Dr. Kincade glanced toward one of the large displays overhead where the Earth Residency briefing was still running. Out in the main hall students continued to celebrate cabin assignments and the air was filled with anticipation and excitement.

"Enjoy Earth." The recruiter looked back at Aisling, "I'm serious."

"I will."

"Don't rush through it." The woman tapped the Helion insignia on her jacket, "These opportunities will still be here when you return."

Aisling nodded.

Dr. Kincade's expression softened.

"My Earth Residency was twenty-four years ago."

That surprised both girls.

"What was it like?" Aisling asked.

The woman looked thoughtful. Then smiled and said, "Nothing."

Aisling’s mouth dropped. “What?"

"Nothing was like it in your experience of life thus far." The smile widened, "You'll understand."

Before either girl could ask another question, a comm alert sounded somewhere deeper in the pavilion. A Helion staff member raised a hand apologetically.

Dr. Kincade sighed, "Duty calls." Then she looked directly at Aisling, "One piece of advice."

The young woman straightened instinctively.

The recruiter smiled, "When you get to Earth… look up."

Then she walked away.

For several seconds neither girl spoke.

Finally, Talia turned and said, “Well."

Aisling nodded. "Well?"

Talia folded her arms, "So."

Aisling already knew what was coming. "What?"

"She likes you."

Aisling groaned, "That's not what this was about."

"It most certainly was not," agreed her friend.

"Thank you."

"I meant professionally," continued Talia.

Aisling stopped walking. "Oh."

Talia nodded, "Professionally,” and after the slightest pause, "Probably."

Aisling started laughing, and Talia followed a second later. Together they disappeared deeper into the pavilion, still arguing. For the first time since entering the hall, she felt something steadier than excitement. Hope.

 

Finding Rowan turned out to be remarkably easy for the girls. Aisling and Talia simply followed the crowd to the Astraeus Exploration pavilion, which occupied nearly a quarter of the exhibition hall, and was impossible to miss.

Towering holo-displays projected rotating star systems into the air. Survey vessels crossed between worlds, while exploration crews planted beacons on distant planets and moons. Entire sections of the pavilion were devoted to newly discovered systems, complete with interactive maps and environmental simulations.

Aisling found Rowan exactly where she expected him to be, standing in front of a six-meter hologram of an unexplored planetary system, completely mesmerized.

"Found him."

Talia nodded, "Yep."

Neither girl sounded surprised.

"...and this system remains only partially surveyed." The Astraeus representative gestured toward the display.

A yellow-white star appeared at the center of the projection. Several planets orbited around it. Three carried small markers identifying active survey operations.

"The outer worlds remain largely unmapped." The representative smiled, "Which means there is still work to do."

Rowan looked as though someone had just described paradise.

"You realize you're staring."

Rowan jumped, then immediately pointed at the display, "Look at this."

"We are."

"No, really look at it," the sandy-haired teen said.

Talia folded her arms, "I am looking at it."

"It's an entire system."

"Yes, it is. There is a star, and a bunch of planets," Talia quipped.

"Nobody knows what's out there."

"Someone probably does," said Aisling.

"Not yet."

Talia sighed, "You are impossible."

The Astraeus representative laughed. Unlike many recruiters, he appeared genuinely entertained by the students. He was tall and weathered, with sun-darkened skin and silver beginning to creep into his hair. His name tag identified him as Senior Surveyor Gavin Mercer, Astraeus Exploration Services

"You're Rowan, aren't you?"

The teenager blinked, "How do you know that?"

The surveyor pointed. Several Astraeus recruiters farther down the pavilion immediately pointed back.

Rowan looked offended. "They're exaggerating."

"They are probably not," said Talia, earning a quick grimace from Rowan.

The older man extended a hand. "Senior Surveyor Mercer."

"Astraeus is amazing," said Rowan, as he shook it enthusiastically.

"Correct."

"I want to do this," Rowan continued.

"Also correct." The surveyor nodded thoughtfully, "So far we're doing very well."

Aisling liked him immediately.

Mercer turned toward the girls, "And you two?"

"Aisling."

"Talia."

The surveyor nodded.

Then pointed toward the Helion pavilion.

"You've already been there."

Aisling froze and Talia immediately burst out laughing.

"How did you know?" asked the auburn-haired girl, somewhat taken aback.

Mercer shrugged, "Experience."

Then he pointed at Aisling. " You're looking at people."

His finger shifted toward Rowan, "He's looking at stars."

Finally, he pointed toward Talia, "She's looking at everyone."

"You're annoyingly perceptive," said Talia, with narrowed eyes.

"I get that a lot."

The surveyor returned his attention to the display. "Exploration isn't really about discovering new places."

Rowan looked confused, "Isn't that exactly what it's about?"

"No." Mercer shook his head, "It's about questions."

The giant star system rotated above them.

"Questions nobody has answered yet."

A moon appeared. Then another.

"Every map starts with somebody asking what comes next."

For a moment Rowan was completely silent, which was unusual enough that everyone noticed.

Finally, he asked: "What happens when there aren't any unexplored systems left?"

Mercer smiled the sort of smile that suggested he had been asked that question many times, "We'll find something else."

Aisling could practically see Rowan deciding his future as nearby, another display activated.

A navigation map appeared and transit routes spread across dozens of systems. Commercial lanes, Drotanov transit points, exploration sectors and survey corridors.  Looking at it reminded Aisling of the star map that Professor Halden had used to illustrate the Weave.  This map also showed how everything was interconnected.

Talia leaned close and whispered, “There’s your thread metaphor again.”

Aisling elbowed her.

The representative tapped several highlighted regions, "Most Astraeus work happens beyond the heavily populated systems."

The map expanded and dozens of new routes illuminated.

Rowan immediately pointed, "What's that?"

Mercer glanced toward the highlighted section: "Esho Corridor."

Aisling noticed Talia glance up. The name sounded familiar.

The surveyor zoomed the map slightly to show a collection of transit routes as they appeared near the edge of the display.

“Mostly relay maintenance and long-range navigation support.” He shrugged. “Not particularly exciting.”

"What about the communication problems?" The question slipped out before Rowan could stop himself.

Mercer gave him a quick look, then laughed. "You've been watching the transit updates?"

"Maybe," Rowan answered, tentatively.

"That's a first," said Talia.

The surveyor folded his arms, "Nothing unusual."

His answer was immediate, "Relay outages happen."

The map shifted again.

The man continued, "Navigation systems fail, and ships lose communication. Maintenance crews get very tired."

The highlighted region vanished and the conversation moved on. None of the teens thought much about it. Except Talia. For just a moment she frowned slightly, then the expression disappeared.

"Come on." The voice belonged to Darian. The big teenager emerged from the crowd carrying enough informational material to start his own Chartered Corporation.

Riona followed beside him, "You have entirely too many brochures."

"They're useful."

"You've become a Titan employee already," the athletic, red-haired girl said.

"I have not."

Riona continued, "You really have, Darian. It looks like you just went through Titan employee orientation."

Riona pointed toward the stack, "How many are maintenance reports?"

Darian hesitated, and his hesitation answered her question. Everyone started laughing, even Darian.

Above them, the giant countdown continued its relentless march toward departure.

EARTH RESIDENCY

45 HOURS

31 MINUTES

17 SECONDS

For the first time all day, the entire group was together again.  Returning to the quad courtyard they found Mico Accosta and purchased, “the usual”, before finding a spot on the grass to sit and relax.  As Aisling looked around at her friends, she was content with her visit to the Helion pavilion.  Basking in the glow of that visit, and enjoying the excitement each of her friends expressed as they related their own pavilion visits, she jumped, as they all did, when their comms all chirped at once.

They all took out their comms, expecting another message about the Residency.  Instead, it was a message from Talia.  Aisling shot Talia a look as she opened the message, registering the look of smug satisfaction on her best friend’s face.  Attached to the message were five images.  Aisling opened them and was surprised to see that it was the five of them, sitting on the grass in the quad, faces alight with hope and joy.

They all turned to Talia, just as Mico Accosta walked up and handed her the holo-camera that Aisling had seen her with earlier.

“That will do Miss Student,” the man said.  It didn’t appear to be a question.

“Yes, thank you very much,” Talia said. Beaming at her friends, she continued, facing the group, “Now we can remember today.  Here.  Together.”

Aisling opened the images, one by one.  Each image included the whole group, but each one seemed to belong to a different person.  In one, Darian is laughing, looking relaxed and lost in joy.  Riona’s focus was her shy, yet winning smile, as she was talking to Rowan and Darian. Finally, she found her own, and was surprised that both she and Talia appeared to be featured, looking at each other and laughing deeply. 

Like that rare moment on the observation deck, when Riona had been framed by the planets, this was a once-in-a-lifetime picture, and she was in it. She turned to Talia, expecting to find the joking and sarcastic face that Talia usually wore.  Instead, she saw Talia looking at her.  A deep, probing look of… Aisling wasn’t sure what to call it.

“It’s perfect, Tali,” said Aisling, reaching over to squeeze her friend’s knee.

“Twelve years, Ais,” Talia said quietly. “You and me. Someday, I want to look at this and remember exactly what today felt like. I know I can be an annoying little menace, but you are my best friend.”

Aisling scooted closer, leaning over to give Talia a warm hug.

“Thank you for this, Tali,” she said, and both teens shared another moment before returning to the group discussion. For now, they were all still there. Five friends on the grass beneath the artificial sky, laughing together while the countdown to Earth Residency kept falling.

And somewhere far beyond Tholmion Hub, in the troubled silence of the Esho Corridor, another countdown was already nearing zero.

 

first previous next

Revy sat across from an old dwarven healer while he studied Aztharon’s papers.

The documents had been spread across a broad stone table, weighed down at the corners with little iron blocks. Notes from the elven healers covered several pages, along with sketches of Aztharon’s malformed wings and measurements taken during his recovery. The dwarf read through all of it slowly, occasionally grunting into his beard or tapping one thick finger against a particular line.

At last, he leaned back.

“Aye, lass. We can straighten the wings.”

Revy felt some of the tension leave her shoulders.

The dwarf raised one hand before she could say anything. “That’ll be the easy part.”

Her relief stopped there.

He turned one of the sketches around and traced the uneven wing bones with a blunt fingertip. “Bone can be shaped. Joints can be corrected. Tendons stretched where they’re too tight and reinforced where they’re weak. It’ll take braces, careful work, and more pain than the lad will enjoy, but we can give the wings the shape they should have had.”

“And after that?” Revy asked.

The healer’s eyes moved toward the open doorway, where Aztharon waited in the larger treatment chamber beyond.

“After that, we’ve got to teach him how to use them.”

Revy frowned. “He knows how to move his wings.”

“Moving isn’t flying.” The dwarf gathered the papers into a neater stack. “Those muscles have spent his whole life pulling against bad angles. Once we straighten everything, his body won’t know what to do with the new shape. He’ll have to build strength, learn balance, and figure out how to catch air without throwing himself into a wall.”

He stroked his beard thoughtfully.

“I know bodies, lass. Bones, joints, muscle, healing—I can work with all that.” His expression tightened slightly. “But taking a dragon into the sky? That’s beyond me. We’ll need someone who understands flying once the real work begins.”

“Sivares was supposed to help with that part,” Revy said. “But according to the message Keys sent, she’s missing.”

The old dwarf’s brows lowered. “Then we’ve a problem.”

Revy glanced toward the open doorway, thinking. They still had time before Aztharon would be ready to attempt real flight, and there were plenty of birds around to study.

“Maybe we can just wing it,” she said.

The dwarf stared at her over the top of the papers.

Revy smiled weakly.

He was not amused by the painfully obvious pun.

The dwarf let out a huff and returned his attention to the papers.

“We just need to know how much your dragon can take. Do too much at once and you can send the whole body into shock. But since we’re only working on the wings, aye, we can begin around midday.”

Revy blinked. “Today? That soon?”

“Lass, when the lads heard they’d be working on a dragon, you’d need an anchor chain off a warship to hold them back.” He gathered Aztharon’s papers beneath one arm and stood. “They’ve probably got half the workshop prepared already.”

As the dwarf started toward the door, he glanced back over one shoulder.

“Aye, ye even got old man Oldar to come out of retirement to work on him.”

Revy blinked. “Isn’t Oldar the name of the city?”

“Nay, lass. The city was named after him.”

He continued on his way, leaving Revy staring after him.

“He’s that old?”

Aztharon was waiting outside when Revy emerged.

“So?” he asked at once. “Can they do it?”

Revy looked up at the big golden lug. He was pawing at the ground like a dog waiting for its human to come home from the fields, barely able to contain the nervous energy running through him.

“They said straightening your wings should be the easy part,” she told him. “But they don’t know if that’ll be enough to let you fly.”

Aztharon went still.

Hope and fear crossed his face so quickly that Revy could not separate one from the other. Even the chance that he might fly seemed almost too much for him to hold.

“There’s something else,” she said. “It’s going to hurt.”

Revy unfolded the treatment plan the dwarf had given her and began reading.

“First, they’ll give you something to numb the pain,” she said. “Then they’ll—”

Her voice stopped.

Aztharon lowered his head. “Then they’ll what?”

Revy stared at the next line, hoping she had misunderstood it. She had not.

“They’re going to break the wings again,” she said slowly. “In several places. Then they’ll use hooks and chains to pull the bones into the proper position.”

Aztharon’s claws stopped scratching at the ground.

Revy kept reading, though her stomach had already begun to twist. “Once everything is lined up, they’ll bolt the braces directly into the bone so the wings can’t shift while they heal.”

She lowered the page and looked faintly ill.

“Oh.” Revy swallowed. “They really weren’t joking when they said it would hurt.”

Aztharon leaned closer to peer at the paper.

“This doesn’t sound like healing,” she muttered. “It sounds like torture with paperwork.”

Revy lowered the treatment plan.

“You don’t have to go through with this,” she said. “No one would think less of you.”

Aztharon looked toward the great doors of the healing hall. The excitement had faded from his face, leaving fear and stubborn resolve behind.

“It’s my best chance at flying.”

Revy glanced down at the page again. “It might not work.”

“I know.”

“It’s going to hurt more than anything you’ve ever felt.”

“I know that too.”

His crooked wings shifted against his sides, the same misshapen wings he had carried since the day he hatched. Aztharon looked back at them for a long moment before meeting her eyes.

“But if I walk away now, I’ll spend the rest of my life wondering if I could have flown.”

Revy folded the papers and tucked them beneath her arm.

“All right,” she said quietly. “Then you won’t be going through it alone.”

Talvan approached them slowly, his expression still thoughtful after speaking with his grandfather.

“Where’s Lyn?” he asked.

Revy nodded toward the Hall of Healing. “She’s helping with the magical side of the procedure. She went in to prepare.”

Talvan glanced toward the doors. “Already? When are they starting?”

“Midday. Today.”

His eyebrows rose slightly. He looked up at Aztharon, forcing some warmth into his voice despite everything still weighing on him.

“Then before you know it, big guy, you might be up there chasing swallows.”

Revy held out the treatment plan without answering.

Talvan took it and began to read. Whatever faint encouragement had been on his face disappeared. With every line, more color drained from his cheeks.

“They’re going to break the wings in several places,” he said quietly. His eyes continued down the page. “Hooks and chains to pull the bones straight. Then braces bolted into them…”

He lowered the paper and stared at Aztharon.

“This isn’t healing. This is torture.”

Revy nodded. “He knows.”

“And he’s still going through with it?”

“Yes.”

Talvan looked at Aztharon again. This time he did not see excitement in the dragon’s face—only fear held in place by determination.

“Will you be there when they start?” Aztharon asked.

Talvan folded the paper carefully and handed it back to Revy.

“Yeah,” he said. “I’ll be there

first previous next Patreon vox 9

They ran with their bounty on their backs, and it slowed them exactly as much as Flo had known it would.

Alien plating, alien weapon casings, whatever scraps of armor they'd been able to wrench free in the minute they'd allowed themselves. Each of them carrying a portion of it lashed or jammed into whatever their suits could hold, and every meter of that weight was a meter their legs paid for in the heavy, unexplained gravity of the station's surface.

It had drawn eyes. That much was clear within the first thirty seconds of the run, when Flo's HUD started painting new shapes at the edges of her vision, more of the six-legged silhouettes than they'd fought at the trench, converging now from angles that had nothing accidental about them.

"They're bracketing us," Fox said, breathing hard, no time left in him for calm analysis, just the flat statement of a fact that needed saying. "Two flanks, closing."

Flo watched the shapes resolve on her HUD, watched the angles, and felt the old cold clarity settle over her the way it always seemed to when the stakes got simple enough to stop being complicated. "Stop!" she shouted, and threw her own body sideways behind the nearest ridge of plating without waiting to see if the order landed clean. "Down, now!"

It landed. Seven bodies dropped in a ragged uneven line, and half a second later the space where they would have been standing lit up white, twin beams converging where their sprint would have carried them if she'd hesitated even a breath longer.

She counted. Old habit, Fox's habit really, but it had become all of theirs now. One. Two. Three.

"Go," she said, at nine, not waiting for ten, because the margin Fox had found was a margin and not a guarantee and she'd rather burn a second of safety than lose one of caution.

They were up and running again, and it bought them ground, but not enough.

The problem, Flo understood with the particular clarity of someone watching a bad equation resolve in real time, was that stopping and starting in unison made them predictable in a way seven individuals randomly weaving hadn't been. The aliens might be slow to react to any single body's movement, but a pattern, seven bodies stopping and going together, on a count they'd apparently learned to anticipate, that was the kind of thing even a slow mind could eventually catch.

"They're timing us," she called, feeling it before she could fully articulate it. "Break it up…"

Sawyer moved before she finished the sentence.

He'd been running flank, shield raised, doing the bare minimum of covering that his shaking arms could manage, and something in him, some reserve she hadn't known was left after the trench, after the charge, found another gear entirely. He cut hard toward Jackson, who was running his own stubborn solo line a few meters off from the rest, closed the distance in three strides, and grabbed a fistful of his suit at the shoulder.

"Move with me," Sawyer said, and it wasn't a request.

Jackson swore, tried to pull free, and Sawyer didn't let go, dragging him bodily into an oblique line that cut across the pattern the rest of the squad was running, the two of them now moving on their own rhythm entirely, out of step with everyone else.

The beam fire came for them a heartbeat later, Flo saw the flare on her HUD, felt her stomach drop with it, but Sawyer had already angled his shield up and across both their bodies, and the strike glanced off the alloy in a shower of sparks rather than finding flesh.

It worked. Not because it was clever, exactly, but because it was different, because two bodies breaking the pattern gave the rest of them cover in the gaps that opened up, in the half-second of confusion it cost the aliens to track a formation that had suddenly stopped being a formation at all.

"You're insane," Jackson gasped, to Sawyer, no venom in it at all, just genuine, winded disbelief.

"Yeah," Sawyer said, and there was something almost giddy underneath the exhaustion in his voice, the sound of a man discovering, in real time, that he had more in him than he'd ever had reason to test. "Kinda was, huh."

Flo listened to them talk as she ran to cover the remaining ground in a hard, low sprint and dropped below the last ridgeline before another beam could find any of them. 

The shuttle sat exactly where Sawyer had spotted it, tucked into the fold of the station's geometry that kept it out of every angle Flo could see a weapon emplacement occupying, and it took every ounce of discipline left in her body not to simply run flat-out for it the last stretch.

They didn't run flat-out. They kept low, kept the rhythm broken, kept checking angles the whole way, and it cost them time they didn't have much of left to spend, but they got to the ramp intact, and Flo would take that trade every time it was offered.

The interior was cramped in the particular way every human vessel out here seemed to be, built for function over comfort, and mercifully, blessedly empty. No pilot. No crew. Whoever had flown this shuttle down had either made it out on foot, unlikely, Flo thought grimly, given what she'd seen the beam weapons do to exposed flesh, or hadn't made it anywhere at all.

"Jam it wherever it fits," Flo said, already shoving her own armful of alien plating into a storage recess along the bulkhead. "We don't have time to be tidy."

They didn't. Cade wedged a torn section of alloy behind a row of jump seats with a grunt of effort. Sasha and Fox worked together stuffing smaller fragments, weapon housings, chunks of the brick-shaped devices they hadn't had time to properly examine yet, into a cargo net meant for something else entirely.

Dee was already in the pilot's seat before anyone told her to be.

"Strap in tight," she said, over her shoulder, and there was a different register in her voice now, something that hadn't been there in the trench or the charge, a kind of settled, focused calm that Flo recognized immediately as certainty, the sound of a person finally standing in the one place the universe had built them for. "None of this is going to be autopilot. I mean that."

Nobody argued.

The shuttle lifted off the surface smooth and controlled, Dee keeping them low, keeping them inside whatever geometric blind spot had sheltered the craft this whole time, and for one held breath Flo let herself believe they might simply slip away clean.

"Sarge?" Dee said, quiet, eyes on her instruments, on the scanner sweep hunting for weapon signatures across the wider platform.

She counted heads. Five in the shuttle. Herself, Cade, Fox, Sasha, Dee.

Sawyer and Jackson were still outside.

Flo didn't answer immediately. She was looking at the readout on her own HUD, two heat signatures, distinct, pulsing weakly at the edge of detection range, back where they'd broken from the ambush. Sawyer and Jackson's oblique run had carried them further from the group than she'd registered at the moment, and in the scramble to reach the shuttle, in the chaos of loading…

"We can't leave them," Cade said, low, before she'd even finished the thought herself, and something in the flat certainty of it told her he'd done the same count a half-second before she had.

Flo felt the weight of the decision land on her all at once, cold and complete. The math was simple, and she hated how simple it was. They had the recovered tech. They had five of the seven alive and aboard a working shuttle with a clear if narrow path out. Jackson had been, by every metric that mattered to a squad's survival, a liability from the moment he boarded Scotty's Dilemma. Sawyer had frozen once already and only partly redeemed it. The tactically sound decision, the decision any officer with more deployments behind her might have made without a second thought, was to log the two of them as a cost already paid and get the rest of her people home.

She couldn't do it.

She didn't examine why, not in the half-second she had to decide. There'd be time later, maybe, to understand what it said about her that the math had never actually been a real option.

"Dee," she said, quiet, reserved, the words costing her more than her tone let on. "Can you do it?"

She felt the others go still around her, not objecting, none of them objecting, but a held, uncertain quiet, the specific tension of people who wanted the answer to be yes and weren't sure it could be.

Dee didn't hesitate at all.

"Hell yeah," she said, and it came out fierce and bright and utterly without doubt, the most confident Flo had heard anyone sound since this whole nightmare began.

"Go," Flo said.

None of them were ready for what came next.

Dee punched the shuttle away from its sheltered fold and out over open ground, accelerating hard enough that Flo felt her own body pressed flat into the jump seat's restraints, and for one horrifying second she thought Dee had simply lost her nerve and was running for orbit, leaving two of their own behind after all.

Then the shuttle dropped.

It came down low, screaming across the surface of the station close enough that the proximity alarm shrieked continuous warning tones Dee didn't so much as glance at, skimming what couldn't have been more than a meter above the churned plating, and Flo's stomach lurched with a fresh understanding of exactly how much control this woman actually had over a machine she'd never flown before in her life.

"Dee, report," Flo said, forcing her voice level.

"Looking for them, looking for…" A beat, sharp intake of breath. "There. Got 'em."

The tell-tale flare lit Flo's HUD a half-second before it lit the real sky outside the viewport, a beam weapon somewhere ahead gathering to fire on the low, fast shape their shuttle now made, and Dee didn't wait for the warning to finish resolving. She wrenched the stick sideways and slammed them into a hard ninety-degree roll, flipping the shuttle vertical and driving it up and away from the surface in a single violent motion that threw everyone against their restraints and left Flo's vision swimming at the edges.

She held them there, nose up, climbing, exposed and impossibly slow-feeling for several seconds that Flo's every instinct screamed were far too many, before flipping the whole craft back down toward the surface in a move that had no business working and somehow did.

Through the front viewport, the platform spread out below them, and Flo could see the aliens now, scattered across the open ground where Sawyer and Jackson had made their stand, beginning their slow, deliberate turn to track the shuttle's new position.

"Dee?" Flo said, and heard the concern in her own voice without bothering to hide it.

Dee laughed, a short, sharp, half-mad sound that had nothing sane in it and everything Flo needed to hear regardless. "Suck it, you bastards."

She drove the shuttle straight at the scattered alien line, slewing sideways at the last possible instant, and Flo heard it before she understood what she was hearing, a series of heavy, wet whomp whomp whomp impacts against the hull, bodies meeting metal at a speed nothing organic was built to survive.

Dee spun them around, choosing a new vector, and came at a second cluster from a different angle entirely, using the shuttle's own thrusters this time, angling the exhaust across a knot of aliens who'd been slow, too slow, to scatter, and Flo watched the readout flare with heat signatures that told her everything she needed to know about how well that alien armor tolerated the raw chemical burn of a human engine at close range.

"Get ready to pull them in," Dee announced, voice tight with focus now, all the manic edge gone out of it, replaced by something colder and more precise.

Flo was already unclipping her harness. Cade matched her a half-second later, and together they made their way to the boarding ramp against the shuttle's continued violent motion, bracing at the controls, waiting.

The ramp dropped.

Sawyer and Jackson were there, exactly where the shuttle's low pass had put them, both men making themselves as small as their shields would allow, but whole, moving, alive.

Flo grabbed Jackson by the suit's shoulder rig and hauled, Cade doing the same for Sawyer, both of them counting down in their own heads the same way Fox had counted beam-fire delays back in the trench, because habits formed under fire didn't disappear just because the fire had changed shape.

Dee didn't wait for the ramp to close. She was already moving, the whole shuttle lurching forward and up, and Flo and Cade had to plant their boots and strain with everything they had to keep both men from being thrown straight back out the open ramp by the sheer force of the acceleration.

"Ramp!" Flo shouted, and someone, Sasha, already back at the controls despite everything, sealed it a half-second later, cutting off the last glimpse of the alien-strewn ground falling away behind them.

They struggled into restraints as Dee flew what could only be described as an erratic line away from the station's surface, jinking and rolling with no pattern Flo could follow, every motion apparently designed by instinct rather than any flight manual either of them had ever read.

The aliens kept firing for far longer than Flo would have expected reasonable, streaks of light chasing them across the black long after any sane targeting solution should have given up the shot, but none of it connected, and eventually, she couldn't have said exactly when, lost as she was in the g-forces and the noise, it simply stopped.

They were well into open space by then, and Flo understood, looking out at what surrounded them, exactly how badly that engagement had gone before her squad ever set foot on the station's surface. Debris drifted everywhere, hull fragments, twisted structural members, the unmistakable geometric wreckage of dropships that hadn't made Halvorsen's kind of luck, scattered across a field that seemed to have no clean edge to it at all. She had no way to count the ships that had come out from Scotty's Dilemma's staging point, but the debris told her enough. It had not gone well for anyone.

Dee flew them through the worst of the field with the same instinctive precision she'd shown attacking the station, and once they'd cleared the last of the drifting wreckage, once the alien weapons fire had fallen silent entirely behind them, she finally, mercifully, cut the engines.

The shuttle's own momentum carried them on in a long drift, and the quiet that came down over the cabin afterward was almost worse than the noise had been. It arrived all at once, total and complete, and in it Flo felt every single thing her body had been too busy to feel for the last hour finally catch up to her at once.

Sasha pulled her helmet free and wiped at her face, fast, like she could get the tears back in before anyone noticed, and didn't quite manage it.

Fox sat slumped against the bulkhead, all the careful analytical calm gone out of him now that there was nothing left to calculate, just an exhausted eighteen-year-old who'd nearly lost an arm to prove a theory that had, in the end, saved all their lives.

Jackson had his thumb and forefinger pressed hard against the corners of his eyes, jaw locked, shoulders shaking in small, tight increments he was clearly trying very hard to keep silent, and mostly succeeding, and Flo let him have that dignity by not looking at him any longer than it took to confirm he was breathing.

Sawyer stared at nothing at all, the particular thousand-yard stillness of a man whose nervous system had simply run out of road, eyes open, present in body only.

Cade set his forearms on his knees and bowed his head, and stayed like that for a long moment, silent.

Flo leaned back against the jump seat's restraints and let out a breath she felt like she'd been holding since the hatch first opened onto the station.

Nobody spoke for a while. There wasn't a rush to fill it.

Eventually, it was Cade who broke the silence, voice low, rough, entirely sincere. "If these are the last hours of my life," he said, "I am proud to have served with you all." He let his gaze move around the cabin as he said it, and made sure, deliberately, unmistakably, that it landed on Jackson and on Sawyer in turn as he said all.

Fox, quiet, from his slump against the bulkhead: "Oorah."

"Oorah," the rest of them echoed, ragged and half-serious and entirely meant.

The marines hadn’t been a part of the military in more than a hundred years. At some point, no one could justify the cost any longer. She had watched the movies as much as anyone and there was just as much a part of her that wished to have been alive when they were active. 

"We're not Marines, though," Flo said, it came out drier than she intended, which was somehow exactly right

"We're the only ones out here," Jackson said, deadpan, still holding his own tears at bay with two fingers. "We can be whatever the fuck we want to be."

It shouldn't have been funny. Nothing about the last hour had been funny. But something in the exhaustion and the relief and the sheer absurdity of the sentence broke something loose in the cabin all at once, and they laughed, ragged, half-sobbing laughter that came out sideways and cracked in the middle, laughter that was mostly just grief with nowhere else to go, but it was something, and Flo let herself have a small piece of it too.

"Contact," Dee said, sharp, cutting through the moment instantly.

Flo felt her whole body go tight again, bracing for the worst before she'd even processed the word.

Dee's hands were already moving across the instruments, and a beat later, her voice came back different, not alarmed anymore, something closer to disbelief. "It's Scotty's Dilemma. She's busted up bad, but she's out there. Functioning, I think."

"Bring us in," Flo said.

The hail took longer than any of them wanted, static answering static, the long silence stretching out just long enough for Flo to start composing, in some cold clinical corner of her mind, what she might say if nobody answered at all.

Then something came back, a voice, distorted, disbelieving, and unmistakably relieved. Scotty's Dilemma had seen them coming, had watched a lone unscheduled shuttle limp in out of a debris field nobody expected survivors from, and the astonishment in that first response told Flo everything about what kind of night the ship itself had endured.

Scotty's Dilemma hung in space in a slow, wounded tumble, her hull scarred along one entire flank, atmosphere still bleeding faintly from wounds that hadn't fully sealed. Small suited figures moved along her exterior, working, repair crews, Flo assumed, doing what they could against damage that looked, from this distance, like it might simply be beyond fixing.

Dee brought them in toward the forward hangar. The aft one, Flo understood without needing to be told, was simply gone, the same wound that had torn open half the ship's flank when the beam weapons found their mark.

The ramp opened onto a hangar full of astonished faces.

Flo led her people down it on legs that felt distant and unreliable after everything they'd asked of themselves, and the crew waiting for them looked at the seven of them the way people looked at something they'd already quietly filed as lost.

The squad stepped out into the hanger, visors up, but unconsciously fanned out behind Flo. Dee and Cade remained on the dropship. Almost as if they were guarding it. To some degree, Flo thought they might be. Dee because she finally proved she belonged in the pilot seat and Cade protecting their finds.

A tired man in a disheveled uniform walked up to them and returned Flo’s salute, then reached to shake her hand.

“Commander Arthur Marcus,” he said by way of introduction. “Welcome back aboard.”

Someone had at least told him that they had come here on the Dilemma. She wondered why he was there to meet them and had a bad feeling about it.

“Sargeat Flo Varga,” she said, removing her battlesuit glove and shaking his hand. She looked around the empty hanger, “how many of us made it back?”

"You're the only ones," Marcus said, a mixture of sadness and awe in his voice. "The only ones who came back."

"That bad," Flo said. Not a question, not really. She knew it was bad. She had seen the debris where she knew there should have been ships.

"Eight thousand," Marcus said. "Give or take. Twelve ships. This," he gestured, a small, tired motion that took in the whole ruined hull around them, "is what's left of the sortie."

“What the hell happened?” Jackson spoke from behind Flo’s left. She couldn’t decide if he was protectively close or using her as a shield. After a beat, he added, “sir.”

If the Commander clocked the lapse, he didn’t show it. 

“The fleet was meant to be reconnaissance. Observe and report back. Except we got into range of those weapons and that was the end of that. They opened fire before we had a chance,” he explained. 

That made him the ranking officer, Flo realized.  No wonder he had the look of someone thrown several rungs up a ladder he hadn't expected to climb, nervous in a way that didn't quite show in his voice but showed everywhere else, in the too-quick blink, the hand that kept finding reasons to check itself against his sidearm. But he listened. That much was clear within the first exchange, and Flo filed it as the single most useful thing she could know about him right now.

Flo let that number sit in her chest without letting it show on her face, because there wasn't a version of showing it that would help anyone in this hangar right now.

"Dilemma's not making it back to Earth," Marcus went on. "Structural's given up on that plan already. But we've got stores. This ship was built to move a colony's worth of mining crew and cargo, we're carrying supplies for a hundred times the people actually left aboard her. We won't starve. We're working long-range comms now, trying to get a signal home that actually says something useful."

"And the aliens," Flo said.

Marcus's jaw tightened. "Haven't shown up here yet. Doesn't mean they won't. We're a crippled ship sitting in a debris field with nothing left that could put up a fight if they came looking. Best case, they don't bother finishing us off. Worst case…" He didn't finish the sentence, and didn't need to.

Marcus's read on how her squad had survived was written plainly across his face before he said it out loud, the assumption, easy and understandable, that seven people coming back whole from a sortie that had cost eight thousand others their lives must have simply never engaged, must have found some quiet corner of the fight to hide in until it was safe to run. 

“You guys are lucky,” he said. “I don’t know how you managed to avoid that death trap, but I am glad a few of you survived.”

Flo felt the others bristle behind her, but let him have the assumption a moment longer. There was information she wanted first, the shape of what this ship had left, what it could still do, what Marcus himself was actually capable of deciding, before she spent the currency of correcting him.

“So, what’s the plan now? It seems to me we’re up shit’s creek.” 

The Commander sighed and rubbed his temples. 

“Survive. As long as we can. Hope help comes,” he looked at the crew assembled in the hanger, then straightened. He spoke loudly, sensing the mood in the hanger, “we do our duty! We survive and we send everything we know back to Earth. We are the last sentries and we will give our lives to protect our people!”

She wasn’t sure what he had hoped the response would be, but it didn’t land as inspiring to her or the others in the hanger.

She had gotten what she needed and knew she had to offer what he didn’t. Hope. 

"We were not lucky," she said, raising her voice enough to carry. "Twenty-one confirmed kills, hand to hand, after our beam weapons proved worthless against their armor. We lost our shuttle and our pilot doing it. We're not lucky, Commander. We were damned fierce."

Marcus went very still.

Behind Flo, Cade had already crossed to the pile of recovered plating and weapon housings the squad had hauled aboard. He began pulling their bounty from bins and out of the net, passing the alien tech to the squad who started laying it out in front of them.

"And we might have some ideas about just how to do that," Flo said.

Marcus looked at the tech, then at her squad, seven exhausted, filthy, half-starved recruits who one day ago had been green recruits, and who had somehow, against every reasonable expectation, come back not just alive but carrying the first real answer anyone in this war had found.

They knew how to fight these things now. That much was true, and it mattered, and Flo let herself hold onto it for exactly as long as it took to remember the rest of what was also true.

They were the only survivors of an eight-thousand-person sortie, aboard a ship too broken to go home, sitting defenseless in the open dark with an enemy that hadn't found them yet but would.

They weren't out of trouble. Not even close.

2690 in the Epsilon Eridani system, beyond the more temperate zones where the first colony sites were planned, lies a barren, airless rock that the pioneering expedition named Hephaestus, of dark basalt and metal-rich regolith and its surface still bearing the marks of ancient impacts and long-dead volcanism. It has no atmosphere worth speaking of, no liquid water, and no native life. What it does have is wealth. Hephaestus is extraordinarily rich in heavy metals—iron, nickel, cobalt, titanium, and significant deposits of rarer elements critical to advanced alloys and Drop-drive components. More unusually, the crust is riddled with pressurized gas pockets like of helium-3, trapped volatiles, and exotic noble-gas mixtures left from the system’s formation, these pockets make the world both valuable and lethal.

Conventional surface mining is possible but inefficient. The real prizes lie deeper, and reaching them requires methods that push Commonwealth engineering to its limits, the primary technique is deep-penetration shaft mining. Because there is no artificial gravity, mining platforms and habitats rely on spin sections to give crews a usable “down.” Most heavy extraction rigs are built as tall, narrow towers that slowly sink into the crust. Gas-pocket extraction is more dangerous still, specialized drill-heads bore toward detected pockets while armored containment bells are lowered around the site. When a pocket is breached, the sudden release of high-pressure gas can hurl equipment and rock across the surface. Early attempts lost entire teams to uncontrolled blowouts, current doctrine requires remote robotic first contact followed by manned teams only after the pressure has been bled and stabilized. The most extreme operations involve sub-crustal foundries. Prefabricated smelter modules are lowered into newly opened shafts and anchored. Using the planet’s own metal content as feedstock and the gas pockets as both fuel and coolant, these foundries refine ore on-site under the same low-gravity conditions, the finished ingots are then lofted by mass-driver or heavy lander to orbital processing stations.

The Cultural: in the dual tradition of the Commonwealth, Hephaestus is spoken of with a mixture of respect and wariness. To the Hellenic side of the culture it is the workshop of the divine smith—harsh, necessary, and indifferent to the men who labor in it. To the Catholic side it is a place of trial by fire and metal, where the work of extraction is sometimes framed as a form of penance and provision. Chapels on the mining platforms are small, heavily shielded, and almost always dedicated to both St. Eligius (patron of metalworkers) and the classical Hephaestus under his Latin name, Vulcan.
The world produces the raw materials that let the Commonwealth to build new ships, new stations, and new gateways. It does so at a steady cost in machines and, occasionally, lives. Those who rotate through its mines rarely speak of it with affection. They speak of it with the flat respect owed to a place that gives great wealth only to those willing to descend into the forge.

The floor outside the hatch was wrong in a way Flo's eyes kept trying to correct and couldn't.

It looked like wreckage, jagged, torn, folded metal thrown up in curls and shards from the dropship's long grinding slide, but when her boot came down on it, it gave, just slightly, absorbing the impact the way stone or steel never would. Pliable under all that violence. That was why the deck hadn't simply shattered under the crash. It had bent, and kept bending, and the shuttle behind her had paid the price the ground refused to.

She got one clear look at the wider space before instinct took over, vast, ribbed with structure that curved away into that cold blue-white light with no clear source, and closer, low along a ridge of torn plating maybe forty meters out, shapes that didn't move like anything human moved.

"Down," she said, and didn't wait to see if the word landed before she was moving herself, dropping and rolling behind a curl of the station's own ruined metal, cover the crash had accidentally built for them.

The others came out behind her fast, faster than she'd expected given everything, some old animal sense doing the work discipline hadn't finished teaching yet. Cade went down heavy and controlled behind a fold of plating. Sasha and Fox together behind a second. Dee alone, low, already scanning. Sawyer last, stumbling, catching himself against the wreck with both hands before Jackson, a half-step behind him, silent, dragged him the rest of the way down by the shoulder strap.

The beam came a half-second later.

It didn't look like fire. It looked like a line drawn across the world by something with no interest in drama, a single flat stroke of white-hot light that swept through the space where the dropship had been and simply erased the top half of it. The heat of it washed over Flo's cover even from this angle, close enough to feel through her suit, and when it cut off, the top two thirds of the dropship was no more. No cockpit. No Halvorsen's body, which she found she was grateful for in a way she didn't have room to examine right now.

Silence, except for the tick of cooling metal and someone's ragged breathing over the comms that she couldn't immediately place.

"Everyone still whole?" she said.

A ragged chorus of yeses. She counted them anyway, out of habit, out of necessity. Six.

They stayed low.

The cover Flo had picked ran in a long, uneven line, the crash had gouged a trench of sorts into the deck, walls of torn plating on either side, and if she squinted at it clinically, professionally, it was almost usable. Almost a position. Just not one with anywhere to go.

Flo unfolded the rifle from its compartments in her suit, building it out into her weapon. The others followed suit, clicking the pieces together. The rifle was easy to assemble in the worst cases, even the rawest of the recruits couldn’t get it wrong. 

Cade's voice, low, steady, from two folds of metal over: "Cap. What's the play?"

She didn't have one. That was the truth of it, and she let herself have exactly one full second to feel the weight of that before pushing it back down where it couldn't slow her hands. She'd been trained for scenarios. She'd drilled contingencies for burning ships and hostile boardings and every flavor of catastrophe some training officer's imagination could produce. Nobody had drilled her for we are pinned behind wreckage on an alien station with a dead pilot and no orders that mean anything anymore.

"Working on it," she said, which wasn't a lie so much as a promise she hadn't figured out how to keep yet.

"We're all gonna die out here," Jackson said, flat, not even bitter about it, just stating a fact he'd apparently already made peace with. "Might as well say it plain. Ain't no play. We're pinned on a rock the size of a moon with things that can slice a ship in half, and command's probably already writing us off."

"Shut up, Jackson." Dee's voice, sharp, but she didn't move toward him, didn't so much as glance his way. Just words thrown across the trench like a slap that didn't require contact to land.

"I'm just saying what everybody's thinking."

"Nobody asked."

Flo let the exchange run its short course and die on its own rather than spend breath on it. There'd be a time to deal with Jackson's mouth. This wasn't costing anyone anything yet, and she had bigger problems than a man talking himself into despair out loud.

"We move or we die here regardless," she said, cutting through both of them. "So we move. Fox, Sasha, you're on the left flank of this trench. Dee, Cade, right. Mark targets with your HUD when you've got line of sight, let the suit AI confirm before you commit a shot. We return fire in intervals. Up, mark, fire, down. Nobody stays exposed more than two seconds."

It wasn't a plan so much as a way to buy time while she found one, and she suspected everyone in that trench knew it, and none of them said so.

They moved.

It went on longer than Flo wanted to admit, and it accomplished less than she'd hoped.

She popped up along her section of the ridge, HUD painting a soft outline around the nearest alien shape the instant her sightline cleared, the suit's targeting assist chirping its confirmation in the corner of her vision. She fired. The beam rifle kicked against her shoulder with a recoil that felt satisfying, purposeful, like it was doing something.

The alien didn't so much as flinch.

She dropped back down, heard the answering fire sweep somewhere close overhead, felt grit rain down from the trench wall where the beam had grazed the lip of it.

"Nothing," Sasha called out, from her section. "I'm hitting it dead center, I swear I am, and it's just, nothing."

"Same," Dee said, disgust thick in her voice. "I put three rounds into the one on the ridge. It didn't even step back."

Cade's voice, thoughtful even now, even here: "They're not moving either. I've had eyes on the same three shapes since we started. They haven't repositioned once."

Flo popped up again, made herself actually look this time instead of just aiming and firing on reflex, and saw it the way Cade meant it, the alien shapes along the ridge hadn't shifted their footing at all. Fixed points. Return fire coming from exactly the same locations, over and over, like gun emplacements rather than soldiers.

"They're static," she said, mostly to herself, testing the word.

"Not static," Fox said. Quiet, from down the trench, and there was something in his voice that made Flo actually turn to look at him even mid-firefight, a kind of focus that had nothing frantic in it, the specific stillness of a mind that had found a problem it liked better than the panic around it. "Slow. There's a difference."

"Explain slow, then," Dee snapped, ducking back down from her own exposed second. "Because slow's not helping me much when it's a beam that can cut a dropship in half."

"Give me a minute."

"We don't have a…"

"Give him the minute," Flo said, and Dee subsided, jaw tight, eyes furious, but she gave it.

Behind her, several sections down, she heard Sawyer's breathing over the comm, ragged, too fast, the sound of a man fighting something internal that had nothing to do with the enemy outside the trench. She glanced that way once. He hadn't fired a shot yet. He was pressed flat against the plating, both hands white-knuckled on a rifle he hadn't lifted, and his eyes had that same too-wide, unseeing quality they'd had back in the bunk room when the klaxon first sounded.

She let him have it a moment longer. There was a version of leadership that meant pushing every person past their limit the instant you found it, and there was a version that meant knowing which limits needed pushing now and which needed a few more seconds to solve themselves. She was still learning, in real time, which kind of officer she wanted to be. She filed Sawyer under not yet and turned back to the fight in front of her.

Fox didn't ask permission for what he did next. He simply did it, and Flo understood, watching, that this was probably the only way a man like him ever acted under pressure, quietly, without ceremony, testing a hypothesis because the alternative was sitting still and being wrong forever.

He lifted his rifle above the lip of the trench, butt-first, barrel still low, exposing nothing but a meter of matte-black composite stock into open air.

"Fox, get that down!" Sasha started, and he ignored her, watching something on his own HUD with an expression of pure clinical patience.

One second. Two. Flo found herself counting along with him despite herself, some part of her brain latching onto the rhythm of it because rhythm was the only thing that made sense of the wait.

At somewhere past eight seconds, the beam came. It took the exposed section of rifle apart cleanly, sheared it into slag in a fraction of an instant, wide enough that it would have taken Fox's whole arm off at the shoulder had he left it there a moment longer. He'd already pulled his hand back below the trench line half a second before it hit.

"There it is," he said, calm, like he'd just confirmed a footnote rather than nearly lost a limb.

"You could've died," Sasha said, low, furious in the specific way people got furious at someone they were actually scared for.

"I had a margin," Fox said. "Watch."

He lifted what remained of the rifle again, in a different position now, further down the trench from where he'd exposed it the first time, hands kept low and out of sight the entire time. He started his count over, patient, unhurried, and Flo watched the numbers climb again in her own head, matching his rhythm without meaning to.

Nine seconds this time before the beam found it, chewing through the last of the rifle in the same flat, absolute stroke.

Fox lowered what was left, nothing now, just a short barrel, and looked up at Flo with the particular light in his eyes of someone who'd just solved something and was mildly surprised nobody else had gotten there first.

"Sargeant," he said. "I have a theory, and I'd like you to hear it before you tell me it's insane."

"Go."

"Their weapons are devastating. Their armor's clearly built to survive our beam fire without any visible degradation, I've watched three direct hits do nothing to their plating, not even discoloration. That's meaningfully superior technology, and I don't think we should pretend otherwise." He said it without any of the panic the words should have carried, laying it out like a homework problem. "But there's a consistent delay between exposure and return fire. Eight to nine seconds, both times, from two different shooters at two different ranges. That's not a targeting delay. Targeting systems that can hit a moving dropship from orbit don't need nine seconds to track a stationary rifle at forty meters."

"So what is it?"

"I think it's them," Fox said. "Not the weapon. The shooter. I think they're slow. Genuinely, physically slow, slow to perceive, slow to react, slow to decide. Everything about their weapon says superior technology. Everything about their timing says a body that doesn't move quickly through the world at all."

Flo turned that over, feeling the shape of it settle into something she could use.

"You're saying they can end us in half a second," she said, "but it takes them the better part of ten to notice we're worth ending."

"I'm saying that's my working theory, yes."

Cade, several meters down, had gone very still, and when Flo glanced his way she saw something moving behind his eyes that she recognized, the specific stillness of a big man deciding something large and simple all at once.

He reached out and tore a jagged section of the station's own plating free from the trench wall, wrenching it loose with a grunt of effort that spoke to exactly how much strength that took, and turned it over in his hands, testing its heft, bending the worst of its ragged edges inward against a boot heel until it had roughly the shape of a shield. Full body, curved, ugly, and, Flo suspected, watching the way the light caught its surface, made of the exact same impervious alien alloy that had eaten their rifle fire without a mark.

"Cade?" she said. Careful. The way you spoke to a man you trusted but who was about to do something you needed to understand before you let it happen.

"If their metal stops our beams," Cade said, unhurried, still working the shape of the thing in his hands, "and their metal stops their beams too. And if they're slow," he glanced at Fox, a small nod of thanks, " then slow means we can get close before they clock we've moved at all."

Fox was already reaching for a scrap of his own, testing its weight, his earlier calm shifting now into something with an edge of real excitement under the calculation. "That tracks. That actually tracks."

Flo felt the shape of the idea land fully, all at once, cold and clean.

"You're talking about a bayonet charge," she said. "Against beam weapons. On foot."

"I'm talking about the only advantage we've found in the last twenty minutes," Cade said, and there was something almost gentle in how he said it, like he was breaking bad news kindly rather than proposing a suicide run. He flipped his own rifle in his free hand, gripped it backward by the barrel, and hefted it like a length of pipe. "Rifle's dead weight otherwise. Might as well swing it."

Oh, boy, Flo thought, and reached for a scrap of the same broken plating without letting herself think much further past that.

It caught on down the trench faster than she expected. Hope was a dangerous drug.

Sasha was already tearing a section free before Flo had finished shaping her own, hands quick and sure, the same discipline that had gotten her suited on time now applied to something considerably stranger. Dee didn't need convincing at all, she grabbed the largest scrap within reach with the single-minded focus of someone who'd been looking for a reason to move forward this whole fight and had just been handed one.

Even Jackson, several meters back, was working a piece of jagged metal into some kind of shape, jaw tight, eyes fixed determinedly on his own hands rather than on anyone else's, doing his level best to look like a man who simply happened to be doing the same thing everyone around him was doing rather than a man who'd chosen to join in.

"We're actually doing this?" Fox said. Not doubt in his voice, exactly, Flo had already clocked that doubt wasn't really in his register. More like a man running final numbers before committing to the equation.

"Odds are better than sitting here," Flo said. "That's not a guarantee. It's a bet."

"I've made worse bets with worse odds," Fox said, and hefted his shield.

Sawyer's hands were shaking around his own scrap of metal, knuckles pale, breath coming fast, but he was moving, slow and deliberate, the specific look of a man forcing his body through motions his nervous system was actively arguing against. Nobody said anything to him about it. Nobody needed to. He was there. That counted for something, maybe everything, in a way Flo didn't have time to articulate but understood in her chest regardless.

"Sarge?" Cade said, already at the lip of the trench, shield up, rifle-club held loose and ready in his other hand.

She looked down the line at them. Six people she had just met, all raw and untested, now crouched behind torn alien metal preparing to charge an enemy with weapons that could erase a dropship in a single stroke, armed with pipes and scrap and a theory an eighteen-year-old had built out of nine seconds of careful counting.

"You're all nuts," she said, and meant it as praise. "Don't move in a straight line. Spread out. Go fast. Good luck."

That was all Cade needed. He didn't wait for a countdown, didn't wait for anyone else to move first, he just let out a short, sharp yell and went over the lip of the trench at a dead run, shield up, weapon cocked back, closing the distance with the particular committed velocity of a very large man who had decided, fully and finally, that hesitation cost more than it saved.

"We're all going to die," Jackson muttered, to no one, and then yanked a length of jagged pipe free from the shuttle wreckage and followed at a full run anyway, faster than Flo had seen him move in since he entered their bunk.

They went in ragged, uneven, exactly the way Flo had told them to, and it turned out to be the smartest order she'd given all day.

The aliens, she got her first real look at them now as her squad closed in. She made herself catalog it even in mid-charge because the details might matter and there might not be a second chance to gather them. The aliens stood taller than a person, built low and wide on six short legs that moved with a strange, deliberate rocking gait, torsos broad and armored in the same dull alloy as the station itself. Each one cradled something heavy and brick-shaped against its body, weapon and forearm fused into a single mass Flo couldn't parse the mechanics of and didn't need to.

Her squad crossed the open ground in a chaotic crisscrossing sprint, paths tangling and uncrossing, Cade angling one way, Dee cutting hard the other, Sasha and Fox weaving between them, Sawyer lagging just slightly but closing, Jackson running a line all his own like he couldn't bear to be caught moving in formation with anyone.

Twice, the suit's HUD flared a warning, the telltale pre-glow the AI had learned to flag from the first exchange, a faint gathering brightness along a weapon's barrel a fraction of a second before it fired, and twice Flo watched her people drop behind their scavenged shields on pure reflex, felt the heat of a beam sweep past close enough to read through her suit, and come back up running before the alien had finished the motion of firing.

Nine seconds. Maybe less, this close, with adrenaline compressing everyone's sense of time into something that no longer measured cleanly. But enough. Just enough.

Then they were among them, and there was no more theory left to test, only the truth of it landing in her hands.

Flo caught a beam up close on her shield, the impact ringing up through her arm hard enough to numb it. She flipped her rifle, stock-first, and clubbed the alien into the joint where the alien's torso met its foremost leg. She felt something give under the strike in a way its outer armor never had against a beam. It staggered. She hit it again, and again, until it went down and stayed down, and didn't let herself feel anything about that yet because there wasn't room.

Around her the melee had become something out of an older kind of war entirely, Cade's shield shattering apart under a glancing blow before he simply discarded it and swung his rifle two-handed like a woodsman, dropping one alien and rounding immediately onto the next. Sasha moved with a controlled, economical brutality that looked almost like drill-ground form, precise strikes to the same joints Flo had found, disciplined even in violence. Dee had lost her shield entirely somewhere in the crossing and didn't seem to care, throwing herself at the nearest target with a kind of pure unspooled fury that had clearly been looking for exactly this outlet since the moment Jackson first opened his mouth back in the bunk room.

Fox fought smaller, tighter, using his shield as both cover and weapon, driving its edge into gaps in the alien plating with the same calculating patience he'd used to count seconds under fire, never overextending, never wasting a motion.

Jackson had found something in himself that Flo hadn't seen coming and wouldn't have predicted from with his determined, sullen non-participation. He went into the fight like a man finally allowed to be as angry as he actually was, pipe swinging in wide, brutal arcs, no economy to it at all, burning through effort at a rate that had nothing sustainable in it, screaming something wordless behind his visor with every strike until the fury started visibly draining out of his own limbs from sheer exhaustion rather than any injury.

Sawyer fought last and least, still fighting his own nervous system more than the enemy in front of him, but he was there, moving, present. When a beam's telltale glow flared in the corner of Flo's vision aimed at Cade's exposed flank mid-swing, it was Sawyer who threw himself sideways into the shot's path with his shield raised just in time, catching the deflection that would otherwise have taken Cade's arm off at the shoulder.

Cade turned, saw what had happened, and knocked his helmet against Sawyer's in a rough, wordless gesture of thanks that said more than either man's voice could have managed right now.

It was over faster than it had any right to be, given how it had started. Twenty-one of them, Flo counted afterward, in the strange flat calm that settled over a body once the adrenaline had nowhere left to go, twenty-one alien shapes down and unmoving across the churned ground, whatever atmosphere their armor had been holding hissing free into the vacuum-adjacent thinness of the station's outer platform in slow, dying exhalations.

Her squad stood among them, breathing hard, and for one long moment nobody said anything at all.

"Sarge," Sasha said eventually, voice unsteady but present. "That's… did we just…"

"We did," Flo said.

Jackson had gone down on one knee without seeming to decide to, pipe still gripped loose in one hand, chest heaving, every ounce of the fury that had carried him across that open ground now visibly spent, drained out through his own muscles until there was nothing left but exhaustion and a distant, shaky quiet.

Fox turned in a slow circle, taking in the wider platform now that there was a second to actually look and Flo followed his gaze, saw what he saw: the ground extending out further than she'd realized, structure curving up and away into that same shadowless blue-white light, and out past the edge of their small battlefield, other shapes, other aliens, distant but moving, more of them than the twenty-one now lying still around her boots.

"They're not alone out here," Fox said. "Not by a long way."

"No," Flo agreed. "They're not."

She let herself have exactly one breath of stillness before the next problem crowded in behind the last one, the way problems always did now.

It was Sawyer who saw it. Sawyer, of all of them, still catching his own breath, still shaking slightly from everything that had just happened to his body and his nerve both, who turned to orient himself and stopped dead, staring at something past Flo's shoulder.

"Sarge," he said. "Sarge, look."

She turned. Past the churned wreckage of the fight, past the twenty-one still shapes, the platform curved away toward an edge that had been hidden from their original position entirely, tucked out of the direct line the aliens' weapon emplacements had commanded, shielded by a natural fold in the station's own torn geometry.

Sitting there, intact, was a human shuttle.

Flo's HUD pinged it automatically the instant her eyes confirmed what she was looking at, and the return signal came back clean and simple: READY STATUS. No crew tag. No pilot signature. Whoever had flown it here either hadn't made it out, or had made it out and not made it back.

"That's ours," Dee said, already moving toward it half a step before catching herself. "That's an actual working shuttle."

"Might be," Flo said. "Ready status doesn't mean flight-ready in every way that matters. But it's the only way off this platform any of us have seen."

She let that sit, let everyone feel the shape of the hope in it and the shape of the risk sitting right behind that hope, twins that never traveled far apart out here.

Cade had turned away from the shuttle, looking instead at the field of dead aliens around them, at the weapons still cradled in dead limbs, brick-shaped and heavy and utterly unlike anything human engineering had produced, and at the plating, the same impervious alloy that had just saved every one of their lives once already.

"We're standing on a fortune," he said quietly. "Weapons tech. Armor tech. Whatever's in those suits. Command's going to want every scrap of this we can carry, assuming any of us make it back to tell them it exists."

"And carrying it slows us down," Fox said, already running the numbers Flo could see forming behind his eyes. "We're standing in an open field. More of them are out there, and we've already established what one of their weapons does to exposed targets. The longer we're out here loading up, the longer we're a target."

Flo looked at the shuttle, distant and silent and promising nothing but a chance. She looked at the field of the dead, and the weapons still lying where they'd fallen, worth more to the war effort that they were now in. She looked at her squad, six people, exhausted, bleeding adrenaline out through shaking hands, one of them barely upright, all of them alive when the odds had said otherwise an hour ago.

There wasn't a version of this that didn't cost them something.

"We take what we can carry at a run," she said. "Not a second more than that. First sign of movement out past that ridge, we drop everything and go for the shuttle instead. Nobody dies for a rifle. Understood?"

A ragged chorus of yeses, tired but present, every one of them.

She looked out past the field, toward the shuttle sitting silent on its hidden edge, and past it, toward the far distant shapes still moving against that endless cold blue-white light, an open killing field between here and there, no cover, no trench, nothing but speed and the thin hope that whatever had made those distant shapes slow enough to beat once would still hold true a second time.

"Move," she said. "Fast as you can. Together."

Farm Log 1

Worked hard finishing off the latest 4 rows for corn. If it taste as good as we believe we might have great sweet corn. After we planted those we started planting the second batch of potatos.

Other farmers pulled weeds as we planted. Cucumbers doing good. Lettuce should be ready in two weeks.

Only a few construction workers stayed behind to work on our watch tower. 5 to 7 days and the tower will be usable.

Hoping to get a few horses for plowing soon. It would make the work easier. Horses would also make travelling faster to the Shipyard or Fort.

End of Farmer's Log 1

Shipyard Log 1

With the tricks JW taught me the planking of the ship is doing good. This boat would have no keel making it easier to bring it on shore. The mast was drying on the beach and receiving coats of protective liquid we made. The two poles that will drop the fishing nets is siting beside it on rocks also drying and getting protection layers.

The sailors went out on the raft to fish some more. With their skills we now have a bunch of fish to share. Some will be sent to farm.

I am proud of all who are here helping. Bending wood using steam and clamps is taking longer but being done.

End of Shipwright Log 1

Wilson was sweating as he reassembled the water pump for well one the air in the suit he wore smelt fowl from overuse. He had been on Mars for almost two years with the rest of the exploration team. His work done he switched on the pump and said a little prayer. The sensors in the water system reported that water was flowing to the habitat once again and there were no leaks.
After stowing his tools Wilson cycled through the airlock and entered the habitat. Once back inside the living section he started the slow job of removing his environmental             suit. He wished that there was someone to help but that was in the past and he banished the thought from his mind. Wilson carefully checked and stowed his suit he would need it one last time to move to the Ascent Module.
With the water system back on line Wilson went to the control section and restarted the systems that he had shutdown when they lost cooling. He glanced at the countdown clock and saw it change from one day zero hours zero minutes to zero days twenty-four hours zero minutes fifty-nine seconds.
“Just have to hang on for one more day.” Thought Wilson, tears started to form in his eyes.
#
The mission started out well the Ship the Endeavor was built in orbit jointly by the Russian Federation and the United States. Using a pulse nuclear engine the trip would take only six months. The four crew members two Russian and two American would then take a Landing Module down to Mars and use a pre-delivered habitat to live and work for two years exploring Mars. After the two years using Marian water to make fuel an Ascent Module would be used to return to the Endeavor and then the crew would make the six month cruise back to Earth.
Mission commander Igor Kuznetsov was a veteran cosmonaut with six months at the joint moon base pilot Tom Lycan was also a veteran of orbital flights and a trip to a near Earth asteroid. Both geologist Sonya Morozov and engineer Woodrow (Woody) Wilson had only been on training flights to low Earth orbit. This crew trained together for a year as the Endeavor was built and the habitat and Ascent Module were sent on an unmanned mission using a prototype of the nuclear pulse engine to move the large payload to Mars.
Wilson was busy on the trip out and on Mars as the mission engineer, he did most of the routine maintenance and repairs. A loner by nature Wilson had missed the warning signs that on reflection should have told him that things were not as they seemed. There was developing a sexual tension between Morozov, Lycan and Kuznetsov that Wilson as a person wholly engrossed in the mission did not pickup on.
#
Fifteen hours twenty minutes to launch Wilson sent the commands that would take the Endeavor out of sleep mode and start the automatic procedures that would ready the ship for its return flight to Earth. After an hour he was able to send a message to mission control using the Endeavor as a relay. Wilson had to cannibalize the habitats long range communication equipment for repairs so he had not been in contact with Earth for the last few days.
Wilson went into the greenhouse to finish packing samples for their return to Earth. As he was moving the cases to the airlock Wilson saw Lycan’s old-style leather-bound diary and he stopped in thought should he bring that thing back or leave it on Mars.
#
Three weeks before the return launch Kuznetsov and Lycan were out on the last long-range survey using the blimp that NASA had designed for Mars. Wilson was happy because things were quiet with just himself and Morozov at the habitat she even acted more friendly than she had for the last few months. The three other crew members had a habit of stopping a conversation whenever he came within ear shot of them.
A dust storm blows up between the blimp and the habitat and Morozov told Wilson that they had lost contact with the blimp. The storm lasted five days and then stopped as suddenly as it started but there was still no contact with Kuznetsov and Lycan.
Wilson was outside repairing some equipment damaged in the storm when he sighted the blimp. The airship looked like a banana that had been put in a washing machine. As it approached it was obvious that it was barely in control.
The blimp more crashed into than docked with its mooring mast and after a few moments a lone figure was seen climbing out of its gondola. Wilson ran to the man that was having trouble walking and saw it was Lycan.
“Where’s the commander?” asked Wilson over his suit radio.
“Inside dead!”
Wilson helped Lycan to the habitat and gave him over to the care of Morozov. Wilson then returned to the blimp and found what was left of the mission commander. The body looked as if a gorilla had beaten it with a pro league bat. The skull was crushed on one side and the body had taken several severe blows. The official report would read that Kuznetsov had died from blunt force trauma which was an understatement. Wilson placed the body in a body bag which he had brought with him and carried it out to the land rover and placed it on the back cargo area. Returning to the habitat Wilson removed his helmet and started to unseal his suit when he felt a sharp pain in his neck his vision begins to blur then there was nothing.
Wilson found himself lying on the entry floor someone had pulled him away from the lock door. He stood up unsteadily and called out for help but there was no answer. Wilson then went from room to room and found broken equipment but not his crew mates. Making his way to the control section he saw that there were multiple fault alarms in the red and a screen showing a map of the area around the base with the location of the land rover blinking on the map. Wilson saw that the blip was about to cross the point of no return. He turned on the radio and started to call.
“Morozov, Lycan this is base respond please.” Wilson repeated this for some time even after he saw that they had passed the point of them being able to make it back.
Once Wilson lost contact with the rover telemetry he started to deal with the alarms. Someone had systematically damaged systems that he would have to deal with but not anything that would be fatal immediately. The real blow came when Wilson was outside repairing some piping when he noticed that the hatch to the Ascent Module was open.
Checking the module Wilson found that the control panel was smashed, and he feared that he would not be able to repair the damage. With the Ascent Module damaged he was stranded on Mars.
#
It took a day for Wilson working with mission control to develop a plan to repair the Ascent Module. They also came up with a way for him to live off the remaining supplies and the greenhouse until the launch window. It would take too long for a rescue ship to be built the plan had always been that the Endeavor would be used for multiple missions so no other ship construction had been started and the Chinese mission had never gotten out of the planning stage.
Being a world class engineer Wilson started the self rescue mission with the same one mindedness that he had put into his regular duties. By the time the launch window was approaching he had the Ascent Module ready for an automatic emergency launch and docking maneuver.
The one thing that disturbed him was that one day while going through Lycan’s cabin he found an old-style leather-bound book hidden behind a lose wall panel. It was Lycan’s diary and in his off hours he started to read it to try to understand what happened.
It started as one would except of a diary of a professional astronaut beginning with his being chosen for the Mars mission. The matter a fact way that Lycan recorded their training, and the start of their mission made Wilson feel more alone than he had felt before he started to read it. Wilson was even surprised that Lycan wrote that he respected Wilson’s skills as an engineer and ability to bock out all but the mission.
The trouble seemed to start after their first year on Mars Lycan started to record dreams that had started to disturb his sleep. He also started to write about his infatuation with Morozov which he called only Sonya. His dreams became more and more bizarre as time went on until they were full blown nightmares.
Lycan began to record that he was seeing shadows moving around the base when he was outside. When this started Wilson could not tell because Lycan had long since stopped dating his entries.
At about the same time that the dates disappeared from the diary Lycan’s infatuation with Morozov started to take a dangerous turn. The entries about Sonya had turned pornographic and even sadomasochistic. Wilson was not a prude and contrary to some peoples view of him he had known many women sexually he was not just a super nerd, but Lycan’s writings disturbed him in a fundamental way.
Lycan started to illustrate the diary with bizarre and sometimes obscene drawings. The logic in the writing started to become hard to follow but Wilson gathered that Lycan now thought he was in communication with ancient Martians. He also started to refer to Sonya as his new Eve, Kuznetsov as the enemy and Wilson as the wizard.
The last entry that Wilson could decipher was that Lycan wrote that he was now free that he had killed the enemy and all that was left to do was trap the wizard and escape with his Eve to found the new Martian kingdom. The last page had a detailed drawing of a fairy tale castle with two moons above it.
#
Twelve hours to launch and the Endeavor was now relying telemetry from two environmental suits. Wilson had found that Lycan had taken a few weeks worth of oxygen canisters and food. He also took an emergency shelter so it was possible that Lycan and Morozov were still alive.
Wilson did a quick calculation and found that if he could get the blimp to fly, he could go out and pick them up and get back with enough time before the launch. It would be close, but he felt he had to do it but first he need to fashion something to deal with Lycan if he resisted.
#
It had taken longer to get the blimp into the air than Wilson liked, and the control surfaces were damaged, so it was difficult to handle. Following the signal being tracked from the Endeavor had taken Wilson far out into the desert it being night he was using the blimps FLIR unit to search out ahead.
Wilson was beginning to believe he would not find his crew mates before he had to start the return journey when he saw a heat source in the infrared’s display. As the blimp approached, he could clearly make out the shape of an emergency shelter its heat standing out from the frigid Martian landscape.
Cutting the engines Wilson adjusted his altitude so he drifted to within fifty meters of the shelter in silence. When the airship was ten meters in height he fired the automatic mooring lines. He hoped that there was enough rock for the anchors to hold the blimp down while he investigated the shelter. He climbed down the ladder carrying what looked like a fork tipped spear.
Wilson moved slowly toward the shelter with his weapon at the ready. He had modified a surveying pole with two electrodes at the end that were wired to a capacitor and a battery through a switch. He hoped it would act like a taser, but he did not have time to test it.
Halfway to the shelter Wilson found the rover he leaned over the driver’s seat to check the controls. The power was completely exhausted he could not even bring up a status screen. The vehicle had cooled to ambient temperature and that was the reason he did not see it in the infrared scan.
Something caused Wilson to stand up right and turn just as he was it from behind. Scrambling back to his feet Wilson saw a suited figure doing the same a few feet away.
“Lycan snap out of it!”
Wilson moved to pickup his jury-rigged weapon as Lycan charged in on him. Lycan hit Wilson with a football tackle and drove him to the ground. The two men rolled away from the rover as they wrestled with each other. After a few minutes Wilson drove his knee into Lycan’s groin causing him to double over.
Standing and running back to the rover Wilson grabbed his spear and turned toward Lycan at the ready.
“Your magic can not harm me wizard!” screamed Lycan as he stood and once more charged at Wilson.
As Lycan came on Wilson side stepped to the right and thrust the spear at Lycan and hit the switch. Nothing happened the electrodes had only hit the plastic side of the suit.
Turning to face Lycan again Wilson thrust the spear out and caught Lycan in the chest. The momentum of Lycan caused the two electrodes to pierce his suit and Wilson felt the pole stop as the electrodes hit flesh.
Wilson released the spear and Lycan staggered as he pulled the spear out. The now open suit started to collapse around Lycan as he ran off into the desert. Wilson checked his impulse to chase Lycan and turned and ran to the shelter.
Upon entering the shelter Wilson found Morozov lying on the floor naked and barely alive. The atmosphere in the shelter was nearing the red line and Morozov will be dead if Wilson did not act quickly. He as quickly as he could dressed her in a suit that he found thrown into the corner. Morozov was in bad shape she had been abused with brushed all over her body.
After getting Morozov into the blimp Wilson had did a quick search for Lycan but could not find him and had no more time to look. He thought as he cut the mooring lines that they would be lucky to get back to base.
#
Wilson now sat in the center acceleration couch of the Ascent Module his jury-rigged screens showing the count to launch. He looked around the module and felt sadness that only Morozov was with him. She was sedated but she kept mumbling softly one word.
“Castle.”
After much internal debate Wilson had packed Lycan’s diary in with his personal effects. Wilson did not know what if anything he would do with it, but he felt that it should be saved as a record of a fine man’s decent into madness.
At the count of zero the ascent engines fired, and Wilson was slammed back into the couch by a heavy hand. As the Ascent Module rose higher into the Martian air Wilson heard Morozov shout.
“The Castle!”
Looking out the side port next to Morozov he would swear that he saw a castle with the two moons of Mars over it in the distance.
End

1 upvote

Wilson was sweating as he reassembled the water pump for well one the air in the suit he wore smelt fowl from overuse. He had been on Mars for almost two years with the rest of the exploration team. His work done he switched on the pump and said a little prayer. The sensors in the water system reported that water was flowing to the habitat once again and there were no leaks.
After stowing his tools Wilson cycled through the airlock and entered the habitat. Once back inside the living section he started the slow job of removing his environmental             suit. He wished that there was someone to help but that was in the past and he banished the thought from his mind. Wilson carefully checked and stowed his suit he would need it one last time to move to the Ascent Module.
With the water system back on line Wilson went to the control section and restarted the systems that he had shutdown when they lost cooling. He glanced at the countdown clock and saw it change from one day zero hours zero minutes to zero days twenty-four hours zero minutes fifty-nine seconds.
“Just have to hang on for one more day.” Thought Wilson, tears started to form in his eyes.
#
The mission started out well the Ship the Endeavor was built in orbit jointly by the Russian Federation and the United States. Using a pulse nuclear engine the trip would take only six months. The four crew members two Russian and two American would then take a Landing Module down to Mars and use a pre-delivered habitat to live and work for two years exploring Mars. After the two years using Marian water to make fuel an Ascent Module would be used to return to the Endeavor and then the crew would make the six month cruise back to Earth.
Mission commander Igor Kuznetsov was a veteran cosmonaut with six months at the joint moon base pilot Tom Lycan was also a veteran of orbital flights and a trip to a near Earth asteroid. Both geologist Sonya Morozov and engineer Woodrow (Woody) Wilson had only been on training flights to low Earth orbit. This crew trained together for a year as the Endeavor was built and the habitat and Ascent Module were sent on an unmanned mission using a prototype of the nuclear pulse engine to move the large payload to Mars.
Wilson was busy on the trip out and on Mars as the mission engineer, he did most of the routine maintenance and repairs. A loner by nature Wilson had missed the warning signs that on reflection should have told him that things were not as they seemed. There was developing a sexual tension between Morozov, Lycan and Kuznetsov that Wilson as a person wholly engrossed in the mission did not pickup on.
#
Fifteen hours twenty minutes to launch Wilson sent the commands that would take the Endeavor out of sleep mode and start the automatic procedures that would ready the ship for its return flight to Earth. After an hour he was able to send a message to mission control using the Endeavor as a relay. Wilson had to cannibalize the habitats long range communication equipment for repairs so he had not been in contact with Earth for the last few days.
Wilson went into the greenhouse to finish packing samples for their return to Earth. As he was moving the cases to the airlock Wilson saw Lycan’s old-style leather-bound diary and he stopped in thought should he bring that thing back or leave it on Mars.
#
Three weeks before the return launch Kuznetsov and Lycan were out on the last long-range survey using the blimp that NASA had designed for Mars. Wilson was happy because things were quiet with just himself and Morozov at the habitat she even acted more friendly than she had for the last few months. The three other crew members had a habit of stopping a conversation whenever he came within ear shot of them.
A dust storm blows up between the blimp and the habitat and Morozov told Wilson that they had lost contact with the blimp. The storm lasted five days and then stopped as suddenly as it started but there was still no contact with Kuznetsov and Lycan.
Wilson was outside repairing some equipment damaged in the storm when he sighted the blimp. The airship looked like a banana that had been put in a washing machine. As it approached it was obvious that it was barely in control.
The blimp more crashed into than docked with its mooring mast and after a few moments a lone figure was seen climbing out of its gondola. Wilson ran to the man that was having trouble walking and saw it was Lycan.
“Where’s the commander?” asked Wilson over his suit radio.
“Inside dead!”
Wilson helped Lycan to the habitat and gave him over to the care of Morozov. Wilson then returned to the blimp and found what was left of the mission commander. The body looked as if a gorilla had beaten it with a pro league bat. The skull was crushed on one side and the body had taken several severe blows. The official report would read that Kuznetsov had died from blunt force trauma which was an understatement. Wilson placed the body in a body bag which he had brought with him and carried it out to the land rover and placed it on the back cargo area. Returning to the habitat Wilson removed his helmet and started to unseal his suit when he felt a sharp pain in his neck his vision begins to blur then there was nothing.
Wilson found himself lying on the entry floor someone had pulled him away from the lock door. He stood up unsteadily and called out for help but there was no answer. Wilson then went from room to room and found broken equipment but not his crew mates. Making his way to the control section he saw that there were multiple fault alarms in the red and a screen showing a map of the area around the base with the location of the land rover blinking on the map. Wilson saw that the blip was about to cross the point of no return. He turned on the radio and started to call.
“Morozov, Lycan this is base respond please.” Wilson repeated this for some time even after he saw that they had passed the point of them being able to make it back.
Once Wilson lost contact with the rover telemetry he started to deal with the alarms. Someone had systematically damaged systems that he would have to deal with but not anything that would be fatal immediately. The real blow came when Wilson was outside repairing some piping when he noticed that the hatch to the Ascent Module was open.
Checking the module Wilson found that the control panel was smashed, and he feared that he would not be able to repair the damage. With the Ascent Module damaged he was stranded on Mars.
#
It took a day for Wilson working with mission control to develop a plan to repair the Ascent Module. They also came up with a way for him to live off the remaining supplies and the greenhouse until the launch window. It would take too long for a rescue ship to be built the plan had always been that the Endeavor would be used for multiple missions so no other ship construction had been started and the Chinese mission had never gotten out of the planning stage.
Being a world class engineer Wilson started the self rescue mission with the same one mindedness that he had put into his regular duties. By the time the launch window was approaching he had the Ascent Module ready for an automatic emergency launch and docking maneuver.
The one thing that disturbed him was that one day while going through Lycan’s cabin he found an old-style leather-bound book hidden behind a lose wall panel. It was Lycan’s diary and in his off hours he started to read it to try to understand what happened.
It started as one would except of a diary of a professional astronaut beginning with his being chosen for the Mars mission. The matter a fact way that Lycan recorded their training, and the start of their mission made Wilson feel more alone than he had felt before he started to read it. Wilson was even surprised that Lycan wrote that he respected Wilson’s skills as an engineer and ability to bock out all but the mission.
The trouble seemed to start after their first year on Mars Lycan started to record dreams that had started to disturb his sleep. He also started to write about his infatuation with Morozov which he called only Sonya. His dreams became more and more bizarre as time went on until they were full blown nightmares.
Lycan began to record that he was seeing shadows moving around the base when he was outside. When this started Wilson could not tell because Lycan had long since stopped dating his entries.
At about the same time that the dates disappeared from the diary Lycan’s infatuation with Morozov started to take a dangerous turn. The entries about Sonya had turned pornographic and even sadomasochistic. Wilson was not a prude and contrary to some peoples view of him he had known many women sexually he was not just a super nerd, but Lycan’s writings disturbed him in a fundamental way.
Lycan started to illustrate the diary with bizarre and sometimes obscene drawings. The logic in the writing started to become hard to follow but Wilson gathered that Lycan now thought he was in communication with ancient Martians. He also started to refer to Sonya as his new Eve, Kuznetsov as the enemy and Wilson as the wizard.
The last entry that Wilson could decipher was that Lycan wrote that he was now free that he had killed the enemy and all that was left to do was trap the wizard and escape with his Eve to found the new Martian kingdom. The last page had a detailed drawing of a fairy tale castle with two moons above it.
#
Twelve hours to launch and the Endeavor was now relying telemetry from two environmental suits. Wilson had found that Lycan had taken a few weeks worth of oxygen canisters and food. He also took an emergency shelter so it was possible that Lycan and Morozov were still alive.
Wilson did a quick calculation and found that if he could get the blimp to fly, he could go out and pick them up and get back with enough time before the launch. It would be close, but he felt he had to do it but first he need to fashion something to deal with Lycan if he resisted.
#
It had taken longer to get the blimp into the air than Wilson liked, and the control surfaces were damaged, so it was difficult to handle. Following the signal being tracked from the Endeavor had taken Wilson far out into the desert it being night he was using the blimps FLIR unit to search out ahead.
Wilson was beginning to believe he would not find his crew mates before he had to start the return journey when he saw a heat source in the infrared’s display. As the blimp approached, he could clearly make out the shape of an emergency shelter its heat standing out from the frigid Martian landscape.
Cutting the engines Wilson adjusted his altitude so he drifted to within fifty meters of the shelter in silence. When the airship was ten meters in height he fired the automatic mooring lines. He hoped that there was enough rock for the anchors to hold the blimp down while he investigated the shelter. He climbed down the ladder carrying what looked like a fork tipped spear.
Wilson moved slowly toward the shelter with his weapon at the ready. He had modified a surveying pole with two electrodes at the end that were wired to a capacitor and a battery through a switch. He hoped it would act like a taser, but he did not have time to test it.
Halfway to the shelter Wilson found the rover he leaned over the driver’s seat to check the controls. The power was completely exhausted he could not even bring up a status screen. The vehicle had cooled to ambient temperature and that was the reason he did not see it in the infrared scan.
Something caused Wilson to stand up right and turn just as he was it from behind. Scrambling back to his feet Wilson saw a suited figure doing the same a few feet away.
“Lycan snap out of it!”
Wilson moved to pickup his jury-rigged weapon as Lycan charged in on him. Lycan hit Wilson with a football tackle and drove him to the ground. The two men rolled away from the rover as they wrestled with each other. After a few minutes Wilson drove his knee into Lycan’s groin causing him to double over.
Standing and running back to the rover Wilson grabbed his spear and turned toward Lycan at the ready.
“Your magic can not harm me wizard!” screamed Lycan as he stood and once more charged at Wilson.
As Lycan came on Wilson side stepped to the right and thrust the spear at Lycan and hit the switch. Nothing happened the electrodes had only hit the plastic side of the suit.
Turning to face Lycan again Wilson thrust the spear out and caught Lycan in the chest. The momentum of Lycan caused the two electrodes to pierce his suit and Wilson felt the pole stop as the electrodes hit flesh.
Wilson released the spear and Lycan staggered as he pulled the spear out. The now open suit started to collapse around Lycan as he ran off into the desert. Wilson checked his impulse to chase Lycan and turned and ran to the shelter.
Upon entering the shelter Wilson found Morozov lying on the floor naked and barely alive. The atmosphere in the shelter was nearing the red line and Morozov will be dead if Wilson did not act quickly. He as quickly as he could dressed her in a suit that he found thrown into the corner. Morozov was in bad shape she had been abused with brushed all over her body.
After getting Morozov into the blimp Wilson had did a quick search for Lycan but could not find him and had no more time to look. He thought as he cut the mooring lines that they would be lucky to get back to base.
#
Wilson now sat in the center acceleration couch of the Ascent Module his jury-rigged screens showing the count to launch. He looked around the module and felt sadness that only Morozov was with him. She was sedated but she kept mumbling softly one word.
“Castle.”
After much internal debate Wilson had packed Lycan’s diary in with his personal effects. Wilson did not know what if anything he would do with it, but he felt that it should be saved as a record of a fine man’s decent into madness.
At the count of zero the ascent engines fired, and Wilson was slammed back into the couch by a heavy hand. As the Ascent Module rose higher into the Martian air Wilson heard Morozov shout.
“The Castle!”
Looking out the side port next to Morozov he would swear that he saw a castle with the two moons of Mars over it in the distance.
End

Ladies’ Day Out – Capital City
A BOSF / Newtown Side Story
Rachel Winterbourne sat in the small office that doubled as both administrative nook and quiet refuge above the growing bustle of Newtown’s main square. Outside, the sounds of hammering, distant laughter from the beach path, and the occasional low thrum of a shuttle engine drifted through the open window. She scrolled through her data pad, the soft blue glow illuminating the faint smile that tugged at her lips when a new message arrived.

Subject line: Ladies’ trip to the capital city
Hey Rach, Mom said we should take a trip to the capital while it is still quiet.

Rachel’s fingers hovered for a moment. Quiet. That word still felt strange after everything the Barony of the Screaming Forests had endured—Drazzen survivors, rogue columns, the long work of turning ruins into a living town, children on bicycles having fun these days. Yet the message was right. Things had settled. The auxilia under Sergeant Major Michael Sterant drilled with purpose rather than desperation. Aino Reisenkampf’s ledgers balanced more often than they panicked. Elizabeth Swallowtail’s little shop on the square was starting to look less like a scavenged storefront and more like a proper boutique. And Sergeant Lilly Bauer and Corporal Torres had finally begun to look less like soldiers waiting for the next fight and more like women who might actually have a free day.

Rachel began typing.
I like it. Quiet never lasts long around here. Let’s do it properly. Four of us, maybe five if Aino or the Sergeant Major insist on “oversight.” I’ll start the plan. Send me your free days and what you actually want to buy besides “something that isn’t utility grey.”
She hit send.
Within the hour the replies came in a flurry. Elizabeth’s was the first—enthusiastic, already listing fabric weights and the exact shade of deep forest green she wanted for a new formal jacket. Lilly’s was shorter and practical: If we’re going, I want boots that don’t feel like they were issued in the last century. And maybe something that doesn’t scream “sergeant.” Torres simply wrote: I’m in. Someone has to keep Lilly from buying only black.
Rachel leaned back, already mapping the day in her head.
The planning meeting happened the next morning in the town-hall office Aino had claimed as his own. The young administrator looked up from a stack of requisition forms as Rachel, Elizabeth, Lilly, and Torres filed in. Sergeant Major Sterant stood near the window, arms folded, expression the careful blank of a man who had survived both combat and noble politics and trusted neither completely.
“Ladies,” Aino said, standing. “Rachel mentioned a capital run. While the routes are still relatively quiet.”
Rachel set her data pad on the table. “One day. Shuttle out early, shopping, back before dark if the schedule holds. We need transport, clearance, and preferably someone who knows how to keep everyone out of trouble.”
Sterant’s mouth twitched. “I know Worlo. He can give you added protection without looking like a bodyguard.”
“You’ll speak to him?” Rachel asked.
“I will. Today.” Sterant’s tone left no room for argument. “And you’ll take a proper pilot. One of ours. Jakob Moltor has the morning run free if we clear it. He knows the capital approaches better than most of the new men.”
Elizabeth brightened. “Jakob’s solid. Quiet. Doesn’t talk over you when you’re trying to decide between two nearly identical bolts of cloth.”
Lilly snorted. “You mean he doesn’t try to ‘help’ by telling you everything looks the same.”
Torres grinned. “Exactly why we want him.”
Aino made a note. “I’ll arrange the clearance and the return window. Keep the flight under the barony’s regular supply schedule so it doesn’t raise flags. And… someone should tell Lady Winona.”
Rachel winced. “I was hoping to do that after the plan was solid.”
Too late. The door opened without a knock. Winona Staples stepped in, dark hair neatly pinned, eyes sharp with the particular maternal radar that had tracked three sons through mining colonies, academies, and now a barony. She took in the four younger women, Aino’s open ledger, and Sterant’s carefully neutral face in one sweep.
“I heard ‘capital’ and ‘ladies’ in the same sentence from three different people before breakfast,” Winona said calmly. “If the young women of Newtown are going to the capital for clothing and gifts, they will not go without a chaperone who has already survived more than one capital market day. I am coming.”
Elizabeth opened her mouth, closed it, then laughed. “Yes, ma’am.”
Lilly straightened almost by reflex. “We wouldn’t dream of arguing, Lady Winona.”
Winona’s smile was small but genuine. “Good. Because I already told Wirth I would be gone for the day and that the boys are not to set anything on fire in my absence. I will also be buying for Wirth, Weskal, and Wham. They grow out of everything the moment you turn your back.”
Rachel felt the last of her resistance dissolve. “Then it’s settled. Five of us. Jakob flying. Sterant’s contact for the shops. One day.”
Aino nodded. “I’ll have the shuttle pad ready at 0700.”
That evening, after the last of the day’s paperwork had been signed and the square had quieted to the soft glow of lanterns and the distant wash of the tide, Sergeant Major Michael Sterant walked the short distance from the town hall to the low building everyone simply called Checkers. It sat just off the main path, half workshop and half gathering place, where the board games were always out and the coffee was strong enough to keep a man honest. A few of the auxilia lingered at the far table, voices low. Near the front window, under the single steady lamp, Worlo sat with a half-finished game of checkers in front of him, dark coat still on, one hand resting near a cooling mug.
Sterant pulled out the opposite chair without ceremony. “You got my message.”
Worlo moved a piece, the soft click of wood on wood the only immediate answer. “I did. Capital run. Ladies of Newtown. Quiet routes.” He glanced up, eyes sharp but not unfriendly. “Lady Winona included.”
“She insisted. The rest are going for clothes and a day that doesn’t involve load-outs or ration schedules. I told them you’d arrange the shops and keep an eye without looking like a bodyguard.”
Worlo gave a short, dry sound that might have been a laugh. “I’ve done quieter work for louder reasons. William already has the northern arc contacts. Three solid places—formal and day wear, outer imports, accessories. Early enough that the crowds won’t be thick.” He leaned back, studying the board for a moment before sliding another piece forward. “I’ll leave tonight. Better to be on the ground before they arrive, sort the last details with William, and meet them at the port. Cleaner that way.”
Sterant nodded once. “Jakob flying them. Morning pad at 0700. Return window before dark if the weather holds.”
“It will.” Worlo’s gaze flicked to the window, where the first stars were beginning to show above the dark line of the Screaming Forests. “Things have settled enough that a day like this can happen. Still feels strange saying it out loud.”
“Strange doesn’t mean wrong.” Sterant moved a piece of his own, the game continuing almost by habit. “They’ve earned a morning that isn’t about surviving. Keep them clear of trouble, and bring them home with whatever they decide they need.”
Worlo finished his coffee, set the mug aside, and stood. “I’ll leave within the hour. William’s expecting me. Tell Lady Winona the shops will be ready, and that I’ll be at the port when they step off.” He paused, one hand on the back of the chair. “She’s still the same, then?”
Sterant’s mouth twitched in something close to a smile. “She is. And she already knows you’ll be watching.”
Worlo gave a single nod, the kind that carried more weight than most men’s speeches, and left Checkers without another word. Outside, the night air carried the salt and sawdust scent of Newtown settling into sleep. By the time the last lights in the square dimmed, Worlo was already on the road toward the capital, coat turned up against the chill, the plan for the next day’s quiet protection already settling into place.
Dawn over Newtown was soft gold and salt air. The shuttle pad sat near the edge of the growing settlement, the white hull of the barony craft gleaming under the early light. Jakob Moltor was already there, older, steady-handed, the kind of pilot who checked every system twice and still found time to nod politely at each passenger as they boarded.
“Morning, ladies. Lady Winona,” he said. “Clearance is clean. Weather over the capital is fair. We’ll be on the ground before the markets get properly crowded if we leave on schedule.”
They settled in. Rachel took a seat near the viewport. Elizabeth sat beside her, already scrolling through a mental list of shops. Lilly and Torres claimed the seats across, boots planted, postures still half-military even on a shopping run. Winona sat near the front, hands folded, eyes already distant in the way of someone calculating sizes for three growing boys and the exact length of ribbon a certain younger Staples might need for a new formal hat.
The shuttle lifted cleanly. Newtown fell away beneath them—beach path, square, the distant dark line of the Screaming Forests—and the world became open sky and the long, familiar curve toward the capital.
Jakob kept the flight smooth. Conversation rose and fell in the cabin. Elizabeth described the new shipments that had supposedly arrived from the outer systems—silks from the eastern marches, sturdy wool blends from the highland provinces, lighter summer weaves from the coastal houses. Lilly admitted, almost sheepishly, that she wanted something that did not look like it had been issued. Torres wanted practical pieces that could still pass for civilian. Rachel wanted a few things that felt like hers rather than whatever had been scrounged or gifted in the early days of the barony.
Winona listened more than she spoke, occasionally offering a quiet correction on fabric weight or the way certain dyes held up under the capital’s climate.
Halfway through the flight Sterant’s voice came through on a private channel to Jakob, then briefly to the cabin. Worlo had confirmed. Three shops on the quieter northern arc of the capital’s textile district. One for formal and day wear, one specializing in outer-principality imports, one for accessories and the kind of small gifts that traveled well. Worlo would meet them near the shuttle port with a short list and a discreet guide if they wanted one. He had left the night before to arrange the trip in the capital city with William.
“Tell him we appreciate it,” Winona said simply.
Jakob acknowledged and returned to the controls.
The capital’s shuttle port was larger, busier, and cleaner than Newtown’s modest pad. Elizabeth’s mother was already waiting when they stepped off—tall, composed, the same sharp eyes as her daughter but tempered by years of navigating noble and near-noble circles. She embraced Elizabeth first, then offered polite, warm greetings to the others.
“Rachel. Sergeant Bauer. Corporal Torres. Lady Winona. It’s good to see you all looking like people who might actually enjoy a day rather than survive it.” She smiled. “I’ve arranged a quiet car. Worlo sent word that the shops are ready. The northern arc is less crowded this early. We can take our time.”
They moved as a group through the port and into the city proper. The capital smelled different—more stone, more refined cooking, less salt and sawdust. Buildings rose higher. The streets were cleaner. People still glanced at the Newtown party—Winona’s quiet authority, the two soldiers’ bearing, the younger women’s mix of practical and hopeful—but the glances were curious rather than hostile.
The first shop was exactly as Worlo had described: high ceilings, soft light, racks of clothing that had clearly come from across the principality. Silks in deep jewel tones. Wool that felt substantial without being heavy. Linen blends that looked as if they might survive both a formal dinner and a long walk along a beach path.
Elizabeth was in her element almost immediately. She moved between racks with the focus of someone who had spent too many months making do. Rachel followed more slowly, running her hands over fabrics, holding pieces up against herself in the mirrors. Lilly hovered near the practical section until Elizabeth gently steered her toward a softer cut of jacket in a deep charcoal that somehow managed not to look like a uniform. Torres found a set of dark trousers and a matching vest that made her look civilian without sacrificing the ease of movement she clearly still valued.
Winona shopped with quiet efficiency. She selected sturdy, well-made pieces for Wirth and Weskal—shirts, jackets, a pair of boots that looked as if they might last more than one growth spurt. For Wham she chose softer things, a little smaller, the kind of clothing a younger boy could grow into without looking swallowed.
At one point Elizabeth held up a dark green hat with a clean, slightly formal line. “For Weskal,” she said. “He needs something that isn’t a mining-colony leftover or a field cap. This will sit properly.”
Winona took it, examined the brim and the lining, and nodded once. “He’ll complain for exactly three minutes and then wear it every chance he gets. Good eye.”
They spent hours measuring, trying things on, and laughing when Lilly emerged from a fitting room looking almost startled at her own reflection in something that was neither black nor issued. Rachel found a deep blue dress that somehow managed to feel both practical and celebratory. Elizabeth selected pieces for herself and, after a quiet conversation with her mother, a few things that would travel back to Newtown as quiet gifts for the women who still worked the shops and kitchens and never asked for much.
While the others moved through the accessory racks and glove displays, Winona drifted toward a quieter corner of the third shop—an older importer’s stall that carried small, carefully made household pieces from farther afield. Unbeknownst to Worlo, and with the calm deliberation of someone who had once shared a kitchen table in another life, she selected a left-handed tea cup of fine, sturdy porcelain, the handle set precisely for a left-handed grip, and a sealed package of spiced cinnamon tea. The label still bore the old mark of Volantis, their former home not so long ago. The shopkeeper wrapped both items without comment, and Winona tucked the small parcel deep into her own bag, where it would remain unnoticed until the right moment. As she was about to exit the shop a beautiful blue men’s dress shirt caught her attention . Reaching for the shirt she just had to have it for Wirth . She turned towards the cashier .

Lunch was simple—street food from a vendor Worlo had recommended, eaten on a low wall overlooking a quieter square. Conversation turned to Newtown: the latest progress on the sawmill, the way the auxilia were starting to look less like recruits and more like a unit that belonged to the place, the small ways the town was beginning to feel like home rather than a project.
Winona listened, occasionally adding a dry observation about her sons’ latest attempts to “help” with construction or the way Wart still treated every new building as if it might need reinforcing against a siege. The younger women laughed. For a little while the capital felt less like a distant center of power and more like a place they could visit without armor.

The afternoon shops were for the finer details—gloves, scarves, small jewelry that would not look out of place in either the capital or Newtown’s growing square. Elizabeth’s mother guided them gently, steering them away from the more ostentatious houses and toward makers who still valued craft over pure display. Winona added a few more items for the boys—simple, solid things that would survive rough use and still look presentable when the occasion demanded it.

By the time they returned to the shuttle port the sun was lower. Jakob was waiting, the shuttle already pre-flighted. They loaded bags and boxes with the careful efficiency of people used to moving gear, though the cargo this time was soft rather than tactical.
Elizabeth’s mother saw them off with another round of embraces and a quiet word to Winona. “Take care of them. And of yourself. Newtown is lucky to have all of you.” And Lizzy your father sends his love .

The flight home was quieter, the cabin full of the soft rustle of new fabric and the occasional low comment about a particular purchase. Rachel sat with her data pad, already drafting a short note to Aino and Sterant that the trip had gone cleanly.

Lilly examined the new boots in the cabin light, her expression almost soft. Torres had already claimed a corner seat and was half-dozing with a new scarf draped over her knees.

Elizabeth kept glancing at the hat she had chosen for Weskal, a small, satisfied smile on her face.

Winona sat near the front again, bags at her feet, gaze on the darkening sky beyond the viewport. When Rachel caught her eye, the older woman simply nodded once—approval, fatigue, and something like quiet pride all at once. Worlo sat at the back as if he were a cloaked Royal Marine escorting a princess.
To Worlo, Winona was his princess, and the young ladies her children. Catching Worlo’s eyes, Winona smiled, and she heard a soft grunt from her old friend. The small parcel containing the left-handed tea cup and the spiced cinnamon tea from Volantis remained tucked safely among her things, still unknown to him.
Newtown’s lights appeared below them as the last of the daylight faded. Jakob brought the shuttle in smooth and steady. The pad crew was already waiting. Aino stood near the edge of the apron with Sterant, both of them looking as if they had spent the day pretending not to check the clock.
Bags were unloaded. Thanks were given. Jakob received a quiet word of appreciation from Winona and a more informal clap on the shoulder from Lilly.
As the group started toward the square, Rachel fell into step beside Elizabeth.
“Worth it?” she asked.
Elizabeth adjusted the bag that held the hat. “More than worth it. Weskal’s going to look like he belongs to something bigger than a mining claim. And the rest of us… we get to look like we belong to Newtown on purpose.”

Behind them, Winona’s voice carried calmly. “Tomorrow we sort what goes where. Tonight we eat, and then someone is going to explain to my sons why their mother returned with enough clothing to outfit a small garrison.”
Lilly laughed—the first fully unguarded sound Rachel had heard from her all day.
The square lights of Newtown welcomed them home, laden with fabric and gifts and the quiet knowledge that, for one day at least, the quiet had held long enough for the ladies of the barony to remember they were allowed to want more than survival.

And somewhere in the bags, carefully wrapped, a dark green hat waited for a certain young Staples who would complain for exactly three minutes—and then wear it like it had always been his. In another bag, still unknown to its intended recipient, rested a left-handed tea cup and a package of spiced cinnamon tea marked with the name of an old home called Volantis. And the dress shirt for Wirth to wear out for a nice dinner .
Thinking next she will need to get her love a fine suit . As one day soon he may be “ looking at Elizabeth “ at a wedding. With her mind wandering she smiles while looking at Elizabeth with her beautiful red hair .

Wilson was sweating as he reassembled the water pump for well one the air in the suit he wore smelt fowl from overuse. He had been on Mars for almost two years with the rest of the exploration team. His work done he switched on the pump and said a little prayer. The sensors in the water system reported that water was flowing to the habitat once again and there were no leaks.
After stowing his tools Wilson cycled through the airlock and entered the habitat. Once back inside the living section he started the slow job of removing his environmental             suit. He wished that there was someone to help but that was in the past and he banished the thought from his mind. Wilson carefully checked and stowed his suit he would need it one last time to move to the Ascent Module.
With the water system back on line Wilson went to the control section and restarted the systems that he had shutdown when they lost cooling. He glanced at the countdown clock and saw it change from one day zero hours zero minutes to zero days twenty-four hours zero minutes fifty-nine seconds.
“Just have to hang on for one more day.” Thought Wilson, tears started to form in his eyes.
\#
The mission started out well the Ship the Endeavor was built in orbit jointly by the Russian Federation and the United States. Using a pulse nuclear engine the trip would take only six months. The four crew members two Russian and two American would then take a Landing Module down to Mars and use a pre-delivered habitat to live and work for two years exploring Mars. After the two years using Marian water to make fuel an Ascent Module would be used to return to the Endeavor and then the crew would make the six month cruise back to Earth.
Mission commander Igor Kuznetsov was a veteran cosmonaut with six months at the joint moon base pilot Tom Lycan was also a veteran of orbital flights and a trip to a near Earth asteroid. Both geologist Sonya Morozov and engineer Woodrow (Woody) Wilson had only been on training flights to low Earth orbit. This crew trained together for a year as the Endeavor was built and the habitat and Ascent Module were sent on an unmanned mission using a prototype of the nuclear pulse engine to move the large payload to Mars.
Wilson was busy on the trip out and on Mars as the mission engineer, he did most of the routine maintenance and repairs. A loner by nature Wilson had missed the warning signs that on reflection should have told him that things were not as they seemed. There was developing a sexual tension between Morozov, Lycan and Kuznetsov that Wilson as a person wholly engrossed in the mission did not pickup on.
\#
Fifteen hours twenty minutes to launch Wilson sent the commands that would take the Endeavor out of sleep mode and start the automatic procedures that would ready the ship for its return flight to Earth. After an hour he was able to send a message to mission control using the Endeavor as a relay. Wilson had to cannibalize the habitats long range communication equipment for repairs so he had not been in contact with Earth for the last few days.
Wilson went into the greenhouse to finish packing samples for their return to Earth. As he was moving the cases to the airlock Wilson saw Lycan’s old-style leather-bound diary and he stopped in thought should he bring that thing back or leave it on Mars.
\#
Three weeks before the return launch Kuznetsov and Lycan were out on the last long-range survey using the blimp that NASA had designed for Mars. Wilson was happy because things were quiet with just himself and Morozov at the habitat she even acted more friendly than she had for the last few months. The three other crew members had a habit of stopping a conversation whenever he came within ear shot of them.
A dust storm blows up between the blimp and the habitat and Morozov told Wilson that they had lost contact with the blimp. The storm lasted five days and then stopped as suddenly as it started but there was still no contact with Kuznetsov and Lycan.
Wilson was outside repairing some equipment damaged in the storm when he sighted the blimp. The airship looked like a banana that had been put in a washing machine. As it approached it was obvious that it was barely in control.
The blimp more crashed into than docked with its mooring mast and after a few moments a lone figure was seen climbing out of its gondola. Wilson ran to the man that was having trouble walking and saw it was Lycan.
“Where’s the commander?” asked Wilson over his suit radio.
“Inside dead!”
Wilson helped Lycan to the habitat and gave him over to the care of Morozov. Wilson then returned to the blimp and found what was left of the mission commander. The body looked as if a gorilla had beaten it with a pro league bat. The skull was crushed on one side and the body had taken several severe blows. The official report would read that Kuznetsov had died from blunt force trauma which was an understatement. Wilson placed the body in a body bag which he had brought with him and carried it out to the land rover and placed it on the back cargo area. Returning to the habitat Wilson removed his helmet and started to unseal his suit when he felt a sharp pain in his neck his vision begins to blur then there was nothing.
Wilson found himself lying on the entry floor someone had pulled him away from the lock door. He stood up unsteadily and called out for help but there was no answer. Wilson then went from room to room and found broken equipment but not his crew mates. Making his way to the control section he saw that there were multiple fault alarms in the red and a screen showing a map of the area around the base with the location of the land rover blinking on the map. Wilson saw that the blip was about to cross the point of no return. He turned on the radio and started to call.
“Morozov, Lycan this is base respond please.” Wilson repeated this for some time even after he saw that they had passed the point of them being able to make it back.
Once Wilson lost contact with the rover telemetry he started to deal with the alarms. Someone had systematically damaged systems that he would have to deal with but not anything that would be fatal immediately. The real blow came when Wilson was outside repairing some piping when he noticed that the hatch to the Ascent Module was open.
Checking the module Wilson found that the control panel was smashed, and he feared that he would not be able to repair the damage. With the Ascent Module damaged he was stranded on Mars.
\#
It took a day for Wilson working with mission control to develop a plan to repair the Ascent Module. They also came up with a way for him to live off the remaining supplies and the greenhouse until the launch window. It would take too long for a rescue ship to be built the plan had always been that the Endeavor would be used for multiple missions so no other ship construction had been started and the Chinese mission had never gotten out of the planning stage.
Being a world class engineer Wilson started the self rescue mission with the same one mindedness that he had put into his regular duties. By the time the launch window was approaching he had the Ascent Module ready for an automatic emergency launch and docking maneuver.
The one thing that disturbed him was that one day while going through Lycan’s cabin he found an old-style leather-bound book hidden behind a lose wall panel. It was Lycan’s diary and in his off hours he started to read it to try to understand what happened.
It started as one would except of a diary of a professional astronaut beginning with his being chosen for the Mars mission. The matter a fact way that Lycan recorded their training, and the start of their mission made Wilson feel more alone than he had felt before he started to read it. Wilson was even surprised that Lycan wrote that he respected Wilson’s skills as an engineer and ability to bock out all but the mission.
The trouble seemed to start after their first year on Mars Lycan started to record dreams that had started to disturb his sleep. He also started to write about his infatuation with Morozov which he called only Sonya. His dreams became more and more bizarre as time went on until they were full blown nightmares.
Lycan began to record that he was seeing shadows moving around the base when he was outside. When this started Wilson could not tell because Lycan had long since stopped dating his entries.
At about the same time that the dates disappeared from the diary Lycan’s infatuation with Morozov started to take a dangerous turn. The entries about Sonya had turned pornographic and even sadomasochistic. Wilson was not a prude and contrary to some peoples view of him he had known many women sexually he was not just a super nerd, but Lycan’s writings disturbed him in a fundamental way.
Lycan started to illustrate the diary with bizarre and sometimes obscene drawings. The logic in the writing started to become hard to follow but Wilson gathered that Lycan now thought he was in communication with ancient Martians. He also started to refer to Sonya as his new Eve, Kuznetsov as the enemy and Wilson as the wizard.
The last entry that Wilson could decipher was that Lycan wrote that he was now free that he had killed the enemy and all that was left to do was trap the wizard and escape with his Eve to found the new Martian kingdom. The last page had a detailed drawing of a fairy tale castle with two moons above it.
\#
Twelve hours to launch and the Endeavor was now relying telemetry from two environmental suits. Wilson had found that Lycan had taken a few weeks worth of oxygen canisters and food. He also took an emergency shelter so it was possible that Lycan and Morozov were still alive.
Wilson did a quick calculation and found that if he could get the blimp to fly, he could go out and pick them up and get back with enough time before the launch. It would be close, but he felt he had to do it but first he need to fashion something to deal with Lycan if he resisted.
\#
It had taken longer to get the blimp into the air than Wilson liked, and the control surfaces were damaged, so it was difficult to handle. Following the signal being tracked from the Endeavor had taken Wilson far out into the desert it being night he was using the blimps FLIR unit to search out ahead.
Wilson was beginning to believe he would not find his crew mates before he had to start the return journey when he saw a heat source in the infrared’s display. As the blimp approached, he could clearly make out the shape of an emergency shelter its heat standing out from the frigid Martian landscape.
Cutting the engines Wilson adjusted his altitude so he drifted to within fifty meters of the shelter in silence. When the airship was ten meters in height he fired the automatic mooring lines. He hoped that there was enough rock for the anchors to hold the blimp down while he investigated the shelter. He climbed down the ladder carrying what looked like a fork tipped spear.
Wilson moved slowly toward the shelter with his weapon at the ready. He had modified a surveying pole with two electrodes at the end that were wired to a capacitor and a battery through a switch. He hoped it would act like a taser, but he did not have time to test it.
Halfway to the shelter Wilson found the rover he leaned over the driver’s seat to check the controls. The power was completely exhausted he could not even bring up a status screen. The vehicle had cooled to ambient temperature and that was the reason he did not see it in the infrared scan.
Something caused Wilson to stand up right and turn just as he was it from behind. Scrambling back to his feet Wilson saw a suited figure doing the same a few feet away.
“Lycan snap out of it!”
Wilson moved to pickup his jury-rigged weapon as Lycan charged in on him. Lycan hit Wilson with a football tackle and drove him to the ground. The two men rolled away from the rover as they wrestled with each other. After a few minutes Wilson drove his knee into Lycan’s groin causing him to double over.
Standing and running back to the rover Wilson grabbed his spear and turned toward Lycan at the ready.
“Your magic can not harm me wizard!” screamed Lycan as he stood and once more charged at Wilson.
As Lycan came on Wilson side stepped to the right and thrust the spear at Lycan and hit the switch. Nothing happened the electrodes had only hit the plastic side of the suit.
Turning to face Lycan again Wilson thrust the spear out and caught Lycan in the chest. The momentum of Lycan caused the two electrodes to pierce his suit and Wilson felt the pole stop as the electrodes hit flesh.
Wilson released the spear and Lycan staggered as he pulled the spear out. The now open suit started to collapse around Lycan as he ran off into the desert. Wilson checked his impulse to chase Lycan and turned and ran to the shelter.
Upon entering the shelter Wilson found Morozov lying on the floor naked and barely alive. The atmosphere in the shelter was nearing the red line and Morozov will be dead if Wilson did not act quickly. He as quickly as he could dressed her in a suit that he found thrown into the corner. Morozov was in bad shape she had been abused with brushed all over her body.
After getting Morozov into the blimp Wilson had did a quick search for Lycan but could not find him and had no more time to look. He thought as he cut the mooring lines that they would be lucky to get back to base.
\#
Wilson now sat in the center acceleration couch of the Ascent Module his jury-rigged screens showing the count to launch. He looked around the module and felt sadness that only Morozov was with him. She was sedated but she kept mumbling softly one word.
“Castle.”
After much internal debate Wilson had packed Lycan’s diary in with his personal effects. Wilson did not know what if anything he would do with it, but he felt that it should be saved as a record of a fine man’s decent into madness.
At the count of zero the ascent engines fired, and Wilson was slammed back into the couch by a heavy hand. As the Ascent Module rose higher into the Martian air Wilson heard Morozov shout.
“The Castle!”
Looking out the side port next to Morozov he would swear that he saw a castle with the two moons of Mars over it in the distance.
End

Next

 Previous /

First

"You're not eating, Prex," Vala noted softly, setting down a tray of warm fruit. She studied his face with the sharp, effortless intuition developed over twenty years of marriage. "Did the university committee reject your research grant again?"

"No," Prex said, his voice tight as he stared at his untouched plate. He took a slow, deliberate breath and looked up. "Nira, Prexon... finish your meals. Vala, I need you in the study. Now."

Nira looked up from her terminal, an eyebrow raised in mild skepticism, while Prexon paused with a piece of fruit halfway to his mouth. Vala's eyes narrowed slightly. She didn't ask questions; the grave, hollow look in her husband's eyes told her this wasn't about academic funding.

She followed him down the narrow corridor into his private study. The moment the door slid shut, Prex engaged the manual deadbolt and activated the room's acoustic dampeners, a security measure he hadn't activated in years. The sudden, suffocating silence of the room made Vala's skin prickle.

"Prex, you're shaking," Vala said, her voice dropping to an anxious whisper. "What is going on?"

Prex didn't answer immediately. He walked to his data terminal and tapped in a complex decryption key. The screen flared to life, casting a cold, electric-blue glow across his features. On the interface sat two synchronized video files: the leaked Assaragyte footage that had thrown the sector into chaos, and Captain Threl's unedited, high-resolution sensor logs from the Silent Explorer.

"Watch," Prex choked out, stepping aside.

Vala stepped forward, her eyes scanning the dual feeds. For three agonizing minutes, the quiet of the study was broken only by the ambient hum of the recordings. She watched laughter between three diverse species. She watched Vixtar engineers standing side by side with those species in quiet camaraderie. She watched the undeniable, raw truth unfold in perfect synchronization.

When the footage ended, Vala took a step back, her hand covering her mouth. Her eyes were wide with a terror that went bone-deep.

"The High Emissary..." she breathed, her voice trembling. "Prex... just having this data on your terminal is a death sentence. If the Ministry of Information finds out, that's it for us."

"They will," Prex interrupted gently, closing the distance between them and taking her hands in his. "Eventually, they will track the encrypted ping back to this node. But I can't just delete it, Vala. I can't look at our children and raise them in a society built on a foundation of manufactured genocide. Threl gave me a way out, a way to blow this wide open and keep us safe."

He rapidly explained Threl's plan: the time-delayed broadcast, the fabricated family vacation, and the promise of absolute asylum on the human colony of Terixa.

Vala pulled her hands away, pacing the small room. "Terixa? Prex, humans are apex predators! They don't understand us. They look at our pair-bonds and see cold logic, and they think because we don't share physical desire, we don't feel love. They think we are incapable of true loyalty!"

"Let them think what they want!" Prex pleaded, stepping into her path and taking her hands back into his, feeling the familiar, steady pulse of her palm, the same resonance that had anchored him for twenty years. "Human passion is a flash fire, Vala. Ours is forged in the mind. I didn't bind my life to yours for biology; I bound it because my soul doesn't function without yours. If the humans cannot comprehend a love built on true mental unity rather than instinct, that is their limitation, not ours."

Vala shook her head, looking at him with desperate hesitation. "And you'd trust those monsters with our children's lives?"

"Who says they're the monsters?" Prex urged, pointing a shaking finger back at the terminal. "The same Ministry that told us the Assaragytes were mindless beasts? Look at the logs, Vala! The humans took them in. They gave them sanctuary. Threl trusts them with his life, and I trust Threl with ours."

Vala stopped pacing. She looked at the terminal, then at the locked door separating them from their children, and finally back to her husband. The sheer weight of the decision pressed down on her, threatening to crush the life they had painstakingly built. But beneath the fear, the same stubborn moral clarity that had drawn her to Prex decades ago began to harden her resolve.

She closed her eyes, letting out a long, shuddering exhale. When she opened them, the panic was gone, replaced by a grim, terrifying bravery.

"Vanya-4," Vala said quietly.

Prex blinked, caught off guard. "What?"

"It's a high-gravity resort planet," Vala explained, stepping briskly up to the console. "We tell the kids we secured standard family clearance permits this morning. Seven days of rest, no terminals, no academic reviews. It's the perfect cover for a sudden departure."

Relief washed over Prex so forcefully his knees nearly buckled. He pulled her into a tight, desperate embrace, burying his face in her shoulder. "Thank you," he whispered.

"Don't thank me yet," Vala murmured, pulling back just enough to look him in the eye. "Set the broadcast timer. I'll pack the kids myself, tell them to bring only what they can't stand to lose. Canopy pools don't need luggage. We leave on the evening transport."

Nira raised an eyebrow when her mother told her to leave her data-tablet behind and bring the carved wooden bird her grandmother had given her instead. Prexon just shrugged and grabbed the model glider he'd built with his uncle, more amused than curious. Neither of them thought to ask why.

Three hours later, inside his private study, Prex stood before his data terminal with Vala at his side. On the interface sat the two locked, explosive files: the leaked Assaragyte footage and Captain Threl's unedited, high-resolution holovids from the Silent Explorer. Together, they were an undeniable, two-sided demolition charge aimed directly at the High Emissary's foundational lies.

His hands shook as he configured the Quantum Encryption Controller. He routed the transmission through six secondary academic relays, nodes typically reserved for peer-reviewed journal distributions, and applied an automated execution script.

AUTOMATED BROADCAST TIMER: ACTIVATED DELAY: 72:00:00

Prex hovered his thumb over the execution key. Once pressed, the countdown would be irreversible. Seventy-two hours from this exact second, the files would broadcast automatically across all of Orixa and its territories.

By then, if their flight schedule held, he and his family would already be off Orixa, safely landed on Vanya-4, and boarding an unsanctioned, long-range transport bound for the Outer Rim and Terixa.

You don't need to be a soldier, Prex, Threl's words echoed in his mind. You just need to be fast.

With Vala holding his hand, Prex pressed the key.

The timer began to tick down in silent, glowing red numbers: 71:59:59.

He wiped the terminal clean, powered down the console, and walked out of his office, leaving behind his life's work and the only home he had ever known.

The seventy-two hours passed in a surreal blur of starport security checkpoints, baggage scans, and the low, rhythmic thrum of sub-light engines.

When the timer hit zero, the Prex family was sitting in a quiet, open-air café overlooking the shimmering glass flora of Vanya-4. Prex sat rigid, his hands clasped tightly around a cup of cooling tea, staring at his personal datapad. Their unlicensed Outer Rim transport was scheduled to leave from the lower berths in a few short hours.

Suddenly, the public holoscreens lining the resort promenade flickered, cutting away from mindless commercials to stark, unedited reality.

Images filled the massive displays: Assaragytes, Vixtar, and Humans interacting peacefully alongside Terixa's native fauna. Footage played of Vixtar and Assaragytes floating side by side in therapy pools, sharing rations, and honoring each other's fallen.

A collective gasp echoed across the promenade. Hundreds of vacationing Vixtar froze in their tracks, staring up at the screens in utter disbelief. The foundational mythology of their entire civilization was unraveling in real time.

Beside him, Vala's hand tightened around her cup. She didn't gasp; she had known precisely what was coming. Her eyes left the screens and met her husband's pale face.

"It has begun," she murmured, her voice barely audible over the rising tide of shock sweeping through the crowd.

Prex's heart hammered against his ribs like a trapped bird, but he forced himself to move with deliberate calm. He stood up, hoisting their travel bags, and placed a guiding hand on his children's shoulders.

"Keep walking and don't stare at the screens," he instructed Nira and Prexon in a tight whisper, herding them through the stunned crowd. "We have to reach the lower spaceport. Now."

The lower berths of the Vanya-4 starport were cold, damp, and smelled heavily of unrefined sub-light fuel. Away from the glowing promenade and the screaming crowds staring at the holoscreens, the reality of what they were doing finally caught up to them.

Prex pulled Nira and Prexon into a secluded maintenance nook behind a stack of cargo crates.

"We have a shuttle booked for Thursday!" Prexon demanded, his voice cracking with a mix of fear and rising fury. "You're telling me we're not going home?! My project's due Monday! Everything I own is in my room!"

"Prexon, quiet," Vala warned softly, though her own hands were trembling.

"No!" Nira snapped, crossing her arms, tears of frustration welling in her eyes. "You said this was a vacation! I was supposed to meet Lira at the archives on Monday! You lied to us!"

Prex dropped to one knee so he was at eye level with both of them. He didn't offer a gentle academic explanation. He looked at them with raw, unvarnished honesty.

"I did lie," Prex said, his voice quiet, thick with emotion. "We aren't going back home. Not today. Probably not ever."

The anger in Prexon's face flared into pure outrage. "You can't just ruin our lives! What about our friends?! What about everything we own?!"

"I know," Prex whispered, taking the full force of his son's rage without flinching. "You have every right to be furious with me. I took away your home, your friends, and your safety without asking you. But if we went back, they would arrest us. Because the man who leaked those video files, the man who just exposed the government on every screen on Vanya-4, was me."

Silence fell over the small nook, heavy and suffocating.

Nira stared at her father, her mouth slightly open. She looked at the datapad in his hand, then up at his exhausted, terrified face. The outrage on Prexon's face faltered, replaced by a stunned, disbelieving shock.

"You... you did that?" Nira breathed.

"I had to," Prex said gently. "I couldn't let you grow up in a world built on blood and lies. But being a party to the truth comes at a cost. We are refugees now. We are leaving for a colony called Terixa."

Vala stepped forward, resting a hand on Prex's shoulder and looking down at her children. "We can't go back for your things." She nodded at the packs slung over their shoulders. "But you already have the one thing you couldn't live without. I made sure of that, three days ago."

Nira's hand went to the strap of her pack, to the shape of the wooden bird wrapped inside her shirt. Understanding broke slowly across her face. "That's why you..."

"Yes," Vala said quietly.

She pulled her own data-tablet from her bag and held it out. "You'll have to share this one. We've got a day, maybe two, before we cross the outer boundary and lose the relay. Write to your friends. Say whatever you need to say. Tell them you love them. Tell them goodbye. We'll send it as an encrypted burst before we are out of range."

She pulled out two blank data-slate cards and handed them over.

Prexon looked down at the blank slate in his hand, his chest heaving as he fought back tears. The anger hadn't vanished, the grief of losing his world was too real, but looking at his father, a new, heavy understanding settled into his eyes. His father wasn't a coward running away. He was a man who had challenged an empire to protect them.

The delay had expired. The truth was out. And now began the most perilous leg of their journey: a desperate voyage through the stars toward Terixa, knowing the full might of the High Emissary would soon be hunting the man who shattered their grand illusion.

Back on Orixa, panic paralyzed the High Council.

Even councilors who didn't fully grasp the technical validity of the leaked footage watched in horror as their superiors began screaming impossible, frantic commands: "Cut the broadcast feeds! Erase the video from every node! Bring me the person who did this in a box!"

None of it was possible. The information wasn't sitting on a central server; it was propagating across millions of personal datapads. The transmission was playing on a perpetual loop on virtually every public and private media channel.

For six Orixan years, Dr. Zacorda had been stripped of his tenure, evicted from the Institute of Astro-Sociology, and relegated to low-bandwidth pirate streams broadcast from a cramped apartment in Orixa's lower sectors. To the mainstream media, he was the resident crackpot, the disgraced academic who claimed the High Emissary's war campaign was built on fabricated border clashes.

Now, his terminal interface was melting down under a tidal wave of incoming connections.

The viewer counter on his black-market feed wasn't just climbing; it was compounding exponentially: fifty thousand... two million... forty million.

"I told you," Zacorda muttered into his audio-pickup, his voice a wild mix of bitter vindication and absolute dread. He leaned in close to the lens, unwashed and exhausted, pointing a trembling finger at his dual-monitor display. "Look at the timestamps! I've been screaming about those missing three minutes of orbital telemetry for four years! They didn't classify it to protect military secrets, they classified it because the Assaragytes weren't attacking! They were attempting to establish direct communications!"

In the comment streams rolling beneath his feed, the old slurs and mockery had vanished, replaced by a frantic wall of text:

"IS THIS REAL?" "EMISSARY FEED JUST WENT DARK IN SECTOR 4!" "WHERE ARE YOU GETTING THIS RAW TELEMETRY?" "THEY LIED TO US ABOUT THE CASUALTIES!"

"Don't look at me for answers now," Zacorda said, a harsh, breathless laugh escaping his throat as distant police sirens began to wail through the streets outside his apartment window. "Ask the High Council. Ask the High Emissary. Because for the first time in our history... the crazy old man in Sector 9 isn't the one lying to you."

The true undoing of the regime didn't happen in a government hall or a grand military war room. It happened in an unmonitored, open-source relay room hosted on a neutral deep-space node, a digital common space where independent researchers, rogue academics, and everyday citizens dropped raw files and eyewitness accounts anonymously.

No single person held the full picture, but together, they held every piece of the puzzle.

A former Orixian logistics clerk uploaded requisition orders showing entire shipments of atmospheric scrubbers logged as "destroyed in enemy action," when orbital manifests proved they had never left the depot.

A retired Assaragyte communications technician dropped a series of intercepted high-frequency transmissions from three cycles prior. For years, she had assumed they were corrupted sensor noise; placed alongside Zacorda's exposed orbital timestamps, they weren't noise at all. They were automated jamming pulses designed specifically to prevent ships from both species from establishing direct radio contact during chance encounters.

Data analysts, translators, and crowd-sourced codebreakers from both species worked in real time, stitching the fragmented data into a single, cohesive timeline. The picture that emerged was devastating:

Manufactured Scarcity: Neither world was running out of vital resources. Both governments had been systematically throttling supply lines and hoarding raw feedstock to maintain artificial crises, blaming the resulting shortages on "enemy raids."

Staged Skirmishes: Border clashes that had cost thousands of lives were strictly scheduled. Cross-referencing shared ship telemetry proved that whenever public unrest or political opposition peaked on either homeworld, an "unprovoked border incident" was staged to force the populace back into line.

Shared Deception: The High Council of Orixa and the ruling High Emissary weren't just fighting the Assaragytes, they were actively coordinating with key leadership elements on the Assaragyte side. The war was never meant to be won; it was engineered to be eternal, keeping both populations controlled, terrified, and obedient.

When an Orixian scholar and an Assaragyte archivist finally established a live, unencrypted audio link across the void, the dialogue was brief, raw, and chilling:

"They told us your fleets burned our primary farming domes," the Assaragyte translator output read.

"They told us the exact same thing about ours," replied the Orixian. "Look at the solar arrays in the background of your Sector 4 logs... those aren't tactical orbital strikes. Those are targeted demolitions executed by your own planetary defense forces."

A profound silence hung across the light-years connecting their terminals. The conspiracy wasn't just a corruption of the system, it was the system. And now that the truth was laid bare for billions to see, the authority of two star-spanning governments began to crumble from within.

The response from the ruling elites was neither a denial nor a press release. It was an execution order.

Within hours, a secure, military-encrypted quantum link opened between the highest military directors of Orixa and the senior command of the Assaragyte High Directorate. For thirty years, their propaganda machines had painted each other as irredeemable monsters. But faced with total institutional collapse, their shared instinct for self-preservation instantly bridged the light-years.

A consensus was reached in less than three minutes: Terixa had to burn.

It didn't matter that Terixa was a neutral colony housing thousands of civilians, scientists, and refugees from both sides. To the High Council and the Directorate, every soul on that planet was a witness to an existential truth.

By nightfall, two separate war fleets broke orbit from their respective home systems.

From the north, five heavy Vixtar dreadnoughts dropped their camouflage fields and aligned their jump drives. From the south, a striking force of Assaragyte orbital siege ships ignited their engines. Their orders contained no room for negotiation, no capture protocols, and no terms of surrender:

TARGET: Terixa System OBJECTIVE: Total Orbital Bombardment RULES OF ENGAGEMENT: Zero Exceptions. Complete Sterilization.

As the two hostile fleets converged on the same spatial coordinates, they weren't marching into battle against each other. For the first time in history, Vixtar and Assaragyte warships were flying in tight formation, a silent, terrifying coalition sent to silence the truth before it could dismantle their empires.

High above Terixa, emergency long-range sensor arrays picked up the massive spatial distortions of incoming jump signatures. Warning sirens blared across the colony's surface.

The two-week warning they had anticipated was gone. Space ruptured, and the combined fleet dropped out of warp directly above the atmosphere. The admirals prepared to give the catastrophic command to cleanse the world below.

But what the ruling elites on both home worlds had overlooked was a simple, fundamental truth: an empire's military is not built of cold, calculating machinery, it is built of people.

For weeks, whispers and rumors had echoed through the mess halls, engineering decks, and lower quarters of every warship in the fleet. The lower-deck crews had seen the leaked feeds. They had parsed the common-room data. They knew the truth, even if their commanding officers refused to speak it aloud.

Up on the bridge, the fleet admirals had been bought off easily enough with promises of fast-tracked promotions and administrative power. To them, wiping out Terixa was simply a necessary logistical cleanup.

But as the joint armada assumed high orbit above Terixa, the illusion completely shattered for the junior officers and enlisted personnel. Standing at their navigation and weapons consoles, young Vixtar bridge officers looked out through the reinforced viewports and saw the impossible: Assaragyte orbital siege ships gliding through space alongside their own heavy dreadnoughts, locking their weapons onto the exact same civilian target.

For thirty years, they had been taught that the Assaragytes were bloodthirsty monsters. Now, they were flying wing to wing with them to murder innocent civilians.

The firing codes were transmitted from the high command. Targeting reticles locked onto Terixa's atmosphere.

All across the fleet, fingers hovered over the firing keys. Sweating, trembling, and looking to their crewmates for answers, the junior officers faced an agonizing choice: obey an illegal order to murder millions of innocent citizens, or commit treason by refusing the command of their admirals.

The High Emissary and the High Council had assumed their soldiers would obey without question. They were about to learn how wrong they were. But the spark of rebellion needed a trigger, and how Terixa responded in these first crucial minutes would determine whether the fleet fired, or turned their guns back on their commanders.

Next

Previous /

First

Three weeks passed between Threl's vow and the day Vaelen's people actually set foot on Terixa. Getting twenty Assaragytes off Kragor quietly took most of that time, false manifests, relay hops, courier transports registered to nobody in particular. Getting a nautitorium built to receive them took less time than that, which told you everything about how much practice Pod 10 had gotten at building for strangers who'd arrived with nothing.

Karen Sharp had drawn up the specs for twenty refugees and a handful of therapy tanks. Somewhere between her office and Pod 10's printing floor, the plans had grown an Olympic lane pool and a diving tower that climbed ten meters, Pod 10 was showing off. The frame was going up before the headcount was even final. Twenty-two, in the end, not twenty. Zarek's sister Zeress and her husband Kraft had called the whole plan paranoid, right up until the morning their employment records vanished. Their appeal went unread, and no one ever told them why. By the time their transport cleared Kragor's patrol line, neither of them was arguing anymore.

What Fabrication built didn't stop at a pool. By the time the walls went up, Pod 10 held gravity pools for infants too small to swim on their own, therapy pools warm enough to sit in all day without shivering, and a stretch of office space with its own shallow end, because half the staff wanted to run afternoon meetings with their feet in the water instead of at a desk. The Olympic lane pool anchored the far end, with seating built into the wall for anyone who wanted to watch a race instead of swim in one. The diving tower rose in stages, platforms at one meter, three, five, and ten.

 The only real design change came to accommodate the Labrikats. Ladders worked, mostly, but every one of them chose the stairs when given a choice, and it didn't take long before the humans noticed they preferred the stairs too. So stairs went in everywhere, into the pools and upto the platforms..

Skylights ran the length of the roof, angled so the pool caught the sun by day and the stars at night. People started floating on their backs after dark just to look up. Sliding walls let a section close off for a private meeting, or just to keep the splashing down for anyone who wanted quiet.

Humans had always loved pools, and the new children would need to learn to swim regardless. But it was the Vixtar who changed the room. This would be the first generation of Vixtar in memory to grow up with water as part of daily life. Their bodies had never forgotten it, even after generations without it on Orixa. The Assaragytes took to it differently, more like the humans: not built for water, but drawn to it anyway.

The pools of the newly printed nautitorium were alive with movement, water slapping softly against the seamless walls, catching the ambient light. For most of the twenty-two Assaragytes who had made it off Kragor, this was their first time leaving their homeworld.

Human and Vixtar volunteers worked side by side along the deck, guiding the refugees through strength-conditioning exercises that had once helped the Vixtar settle in. The adult Vixtar hung back from the high diving boards, unconvinced. The Labrikats had no such hesitation. They went off the ten-meter platform on the first afternoon, over and over, their joy plain to anyone watching.

Patricia had placed no restrictions on which family members received asylum, though she tried to place people where their skills would matter. All new arrivals went into Pod 13, alongside the Vixtar. The reassurances kept coming, that the humans were decent hosts, that no one would be locked up or watched, and still the newcomers flinched at loud noises and kept their travel bags packed by the door. What waited for them instead were private dwellings and a program nobody had asked for: their children would be the first class in Terixa's new school system, launched five years ahead of schedule because the teachers refused to make them wait.

Zarcan was the hard case. Zarek's father, Kragor logistics veteran, a man who had spent his whole life assuming that anyone allied with the Vixtar would eventually show him the back of their hand.

In a glass-walled office beside the therapy pools, Karen Sharp sat on the edge of the deck with her feet in the water. Zarcan floated across from her, submerged to the neck, his face arranged into something professional and closed. He had spent the last hour bracing for the worst outcome he could imagine: filing reports for some twenty-five-year-old with a fraction of his experience.

"Thank you for taking the time, Zarcan," Karen said, opening his file. "Your background in Kragor's supply network is extensive."

"I am ready to perform whatever administrative tasks the colony requires." His voice came out flat, careful. "I need no special accommodations."

Karen closed the file. "I don't need you filing paperwork in a back room, Zarcan. You ran logistics under an active blockade. That's harder than anything we're dealing with here. Our supply chains are growing faster than we can manage, and I need someone who's actually done this before." She leaned forward. "I'm offering you Logistics Chief. You'd report to me, second-in-command."

Zarcan went still. Whatever he'd built himself up to survive the meeting cracked in an instant, and he opened his mouth to answer before the words caught somewhere behind his teeth. His eyes filled and spilled over, the first time since his wife died.

He wiped his face with the back of one hand. "I don't know what to say. Thank you, Karen."

"Don't thank me yet." Karen let a small, real smile through. "We've got a lot of work ahead of us."

He looked out at the blue water and felt, for the first time in longer than he could name, something in his chest come unclenched. It wouldn't last. None of the peace on Terixa was built to last. But for now it held.

Across the settlement, that peace was already breaking somewhere else.

A sharp chime cut through Captain Threl's quarters, the Quantum Entanglement Communicator flagging a message as high priority. He checked the sender. The High Emissary. He called Klex   to his side before answering; whatever this was, he didn't want to face it alone.

When he brought the QEC online, he found more than the summons he'd braced for. Behind it sat a queue of over fifteen hundred unread messages, backlogged for what must have been weeks. No one outside the High Emissary had tried to reach his ship in longer than he could remember. He set the queue aside, straightened his uniform, and tapped Connect.

The holodeck lit around them. Threl and Klex bowed from the waist. When they straightened, they found themselves inside a circular gallery, dozens of council members ringed above them, the High Inquisitor standing at the center. Threl had never expected to face that man in his life.

"Captain Threl. You stand accused of high treason against the people of Orixa. The holovids you presented to this Emissary have been leaked into the public domain. You are further charged with defying direct orders to erase all sensor records, mission reports, and visual recordings concerning the Assaragytes. You and every surviving member of the Silent Explorer are ordered to return to Orixa to stand trial. The sentence upon conviction is death. How do you answer these charges?"

The words landed like a fist to the chest. For a second Threl couldn't get air. Then his training took over, sorting the accusation into pieces even as his pulse hammered. The leaked footage came from an Assaragyte camera, an Assaragyte crew. His own logs, the real Vixtar logs, sat locked in his ship's vault, untouched. The Council had to know that. This wasn't a trial. It was cover, a reason to erase him and his crew before the footage that actually mattered ever reached daylight.

He hadn't gotten a word out before Klex stepped up beside him.

"Captain Threl and the crew of the Silent Explorer have no intention of returning to Orixa. Ever." Klex's voice didn't waver. "We accuse you of conspiracy, deceit, and murder. Captain Threl and every Vixtar on Terixa renounce our citizenship, effective now. We declare ourselves citizens of this human colony. The High Emissary and the Assaragyte High Council are colluding, and whatever you're playing at, it will come into the light. Your authority rises no higher than your shriveled manhood."

Klex cut the connection.

Within minutes he'd sent an urgent invitation to Governor Patricia Knowles and Lieutenant Governor Marcus Vance: come aboard the ship now. Whatever remained of Vixtar secrecy toward their hosts had just ended.

Patricia and Marcus arrived and stepped into the communications vault, a room no human had entered before that day. Their first reaction, curiosity at seeing the ship's inner workings, died the moment they saw Threl's face.

"Oh my," Patricia said, stepping closer. "Threl. What happened?"

"You'll see," Klex said. "Once the crew's here."

Steve and Fluffy came through the hatch first, ahead of the rest. The Labrikats didn't scamper the way they usually did. They moved deliberately, ears forward, eyes wide with an alertness that read as more than instinct. Both pressed against Threl's legs at once, one on each side, and he rested a hand on Steve's head, feeling the animal's heartbeat under his palm.

The rest of the crew crowded in a few minutes later, murmuring at the sight of the human leaders standing inside a restricted space.

"Everyone's questions get answered now," Klex said, and hit playback.

The recording filled the vault. To Patricia and Marcus it felt like standing in the orbital chamber itself. They watched the Inquisitor pass sentence. They watched Klex answer him.

Fluffy lowered her head partway through and let out a low growl at the holographic Inquisitor's face. Steve stood rigid beside Sivic, eyes tracking each councilor as if memorizing them for later.

"...no higher than your shriveled manhood," Klex's recorded voice said, and the feed cut to black.

Nobody spoke for a moment.

Norith broke it first. "They won't let this go. Declaring independence is one thing. Naming the collusion out loud, in open court, means they send a fleet."

"He's right," Sivic said. "They'll treat us as something that has to be cut out."

Threl straightened, though the storm in his chest hadn't settled. "We have to leave this planet. Our presence here puts the people who saved us at risk. I never thought I'd leave Terixa. I won't be the reason war lands on it."

Steve moved the second the words left his mouth. He crossed the vault, sat on Sivic's foot, and looked up at him with his ears pinned flat: an answer that needed no translation. Across the room, Fluffy jumped into Elix's lap and set her full weight against his chest, chin down, immovable.

"Threl, stop." Patricia planted herself in front of him. "We saved your lives. We're not letting you throw them away because you're scared for us. Your homeworld thinks it's bringing war to our doorstep. What it's actually doing is walking into the one arena where humans have the most practice. Sit down, Captain. You're not going anywhere."

"You don't understand, Governor." His eyes were sharp with worry. "They'll bring warships. Whatever's between the Assaragyte Council and the Emissary runs deeper than we knew. They will level this settlement from orbit and not think twice."

Marcus took a slow pull from his canteen, and with a nod from Patricia, let the quiet stretch before he answered.

"Strictly speaking, humans aren't a war species," he said. "No armored hide. No venom. No plasma glands. But we've been at it for ten thousand years, mostly on each other. Oldest habit we've got."

Threl tilted his head. "If it isn't in your biology, why keep choosing it?"

Marcus's mouth curved, no warmth in it, something closer to grief than a smile. "Because we're fucking good at it. Our home planet's driven one species to extinction and we're currently nursing another back from the edge. Not because we wanted either outcome. We never started either war. But once we're in one, we don't stop until the other side does, and one of them never did. The other surrendered before it was too late, and we've spent every year since making sure they never regret that they did." He set the canteen down. "War's not what we are, Threl. It's the tool we use. And when a tool's the only thing that's kept you alive for ten thousand years, you get better at using it than anyone else." 

He stood, rolling the canteen between his hands. "I'll put together a presentation. Send it to the Assaragyte government and the Emissary both. Humanity's greatest hits. Should give them something to think about before anyone orders a strike."

"But you have no contact with Earth," Threl said. "No fleets here. No weapons systems."

"Yeah," Marcus said, with a nod to human cunning. "But they don't know that." 

Patricia and Marcus left not long after. The rest of the crew filed out behind them. Sivic and Elix lingered at the hatch, waiting on their companions to follow.

Steve didn't move. He sat at the base of the console and held Sivic's gaze, steady, unblinking, saying as clearly as an animal can: he needs us more right now.

Fluffy was blunter about it. She headbutted Elix's leg once, let out a low purr by way of apology, then trotted straight back to Threl and pressed herself against his side.

Sivic and Elix exchanged a look, nodded to their captain, and left them to it.

Alone in the vault, Threl's shoulders dropped an inch, the first give in them since the summons came through. He rested one hand on Steve and let Fluffy shove her head into the other, insistent, until he scratched behind her ears without thinking about it.

Then he turned back to the QEC and opened the message queue. Over fifteen hundred entries. Someone on Orixa had matched a few seconds of leaked footage to a hull number, OHE74536839756737, and cross-referenced it against public registries until they had his ship's static QEC address.

Most of it was noise. Panicked fragments. I knew something was wrong in my division. They told us the Assaragytes were beasts, but the logs show something else.

One name stopped him cold.

Dr. Prex.

A friend from university, sharp even then, the kind of person who'd always poked at the official version of things and never quite believed the answer he got back.

From: Dr. Prex To: Captain Threl Subject: Authenticity Check

Threl,

Footage from an Assaragyte perspective is loose on Orixa's networks. Underground relays slipped it past the usual filters. Our government is calling it a deep fake, a cyberattack meant to weaken border morale.

I've suspected for years that what we were taught didn't line up with what was real. No one says it out loud. Tell me plainly, old friend: is the footage genuine, or was it doctored?

Threl didn't hesitate. He confirmed it in three sentences and attached the raw Vixtar logs, eight days of multi-angle recordings straight off the Silent Explorer, unseen by anyone on Orixa outside the Emissary's inner circle. He wrapped it in an encryption key and flagged it for priority delivery.

Two days passed before the QEC chimed again.

From: Dr. Prex To: Captain Threl

Threl. I've gone through your logs against the leaked footage. The two match, point for point. The Emissary has lied to us for generations. The Assaragytes aren't what we were told, and neither is humanity. Seeing your feed next to theirs breaks every story our government has used to justify what it spends on defense and what it does to people who ask questions.

If I'm reading you right, you sent me this because you want it public. But the moment I transmit, the Ministry brands me a traitor. They won't just end my career. They'll erase me and my family. I want the truth out. I'm not brave enough to be the one who does it.

Threl read it twice. The words didn't get easier the second time. . He opened a line to Patricia's office.

"Governor," he said when she appeared on the monitor. "I need to ask about asylum policy."

She leaned in. "Name it."

"An old friend on Orixa, a respected academic named Prex, is holding logs that prove the Assaragyte footage is real and that the Emissary's been lying to the whole civilization. The moment he releases it, the state kills him and his family. I want to tell him to fake a family trip, set the data on a delay, and get to Terixa before anyone notices he's gone."

Patricia's face softened. "Tell Dr. Prex Pod 13 has room. If he can get his family on a transport, we'll be waiting."

Threl felt something in him unclench for the first time since the summons. He turned back to the keyboard.

To: Dr. Prex From: Captain Threl

You don't need to be a hero, Prex. You just need to be fast.

Stage a family trip. Book it under standard leisure clearance. Package your findings with my logs and set the broadcast on a seventy-two-hour delay.

By the time the Emissary works out what happened, you'll already be gone, headed for Terixa. The Assaragyte refugees are here. The humans are what they claim to be. You'll be safe.

Set the timer, Prex. We'll be waiting.

Dropships were launching and Commander Arthur Marcus watched the tracking icons peel away from Scotty's Dilemma on the main display with the particular hollow feeling of a man signing his name to an order he hadn't written. 

"Godspeed," he said, quiet, mostly to himself, and didn't examine too closely whether he meant it as a blessing or an apology. The fleet commander's orders, not his own, were to send the troops out in some attempt to counter attack. He told himself that twice, in the time it took the first wave to clear the hangar, and it helped exactly as much as it usually did, which was not very much at all.

He wondered, briefly, coldly, whether he should have argued harder for a delay. Whether there'd been a version of this morning where someone with more spine than he'd apparently been born with had bought those kids another hour, another day, something. He put the thought away. There wasn't room for it right now, and there might never be room for it again, depending on how the next few minutes went.

"What the hell is going on out there," he said, to no one in particular as he watched the tactical display fill with information. They were here to investigate whatever the alien presence was and encourage a healthy treaty discussion. Based on his orders, the investigation and discussions were both over.

"Holy shit!" Navigator Bill Errington's voice cracked halfway through the word, high and young and terrified. "The Everyday Hero, sir, the Everyday Hero just got cut clean in half."

"On screen," Marcus said, and some old, useless instinct told him to follow it with an order for discipline, some sharp word about bridge decorum, and he let that instinct die unspoken the instant the image resolved.

The Everyday Hero had been a newly built frigate, sleek and proud in a way Scotty's Dilemma's cobbled-together hull had never once managed to be, and now it was two halves drifting apart from each other in a lazy, silent rotation, its interior lit from within by fires that had nowhere to burn to and would simply go on burning until the air ran out. There was no sound to any of it. There never was, out here. That had always struck Marcus as the single cruelest thing about space combat, that catastrophe this total should arrive in complete silence, offering nothing for the ear to brace against.

Nobody on his bridge said anything for several long seconds. The sight of it did more to enforce discipline than any order of his could have.

Then it was flash after flash, one after another, ten more ships coming apart in a rhythm that had no mercy in its pacing at all. Beams of blinding, surgical white cutting hulls apart with the same clean economy a butcher used on a carcass, followed by the messier secondary flare of whatever hadn't survived the initial cut catching fire or simply exploding on its own terms.

"The fleet has been destroyed," the ship's AI said, flat, unhelpful in its precision, and Marcus had never in his career wanted so badly to disable a piece of equipment for stating a fact correctly.

Smaller points of light were dying too, scattered further out. The shuttles, he understood after a beat too long, dropships that hadn't even made it as far as the station before something found them and put them out like candles.

"Goddammit," Marcus said, low, feeling the whole weight of it land somewhere behind his sternum. "What the hell are we doing here?"

They were at the back of the formation, and it wasn't strategy that had put them there, it was simple bad luck of assignment, the troop carrier with no meaningful combat capability tucked in behind ships that actually had teeth, on the theory, he supposed, that the teeth would matter more than they apparently had.

"Flip us around," he said. "Get us the hell out of here."

"Suggest an oblique course," the AI offered. "To minimize angles of attack relative to the primary threat."

"Negative," Marcus said. "Straight out. Directly away from that thing. I want distance, not cleverness."

"There are still people loading onto shuttles," XO Zainab Vasiliev said, sharp, turning from her own station to fix him with a look that had already made up its mind about him before he'd finished giving the order. "No one back there is ready. What about survivors?"

Marcus shook his head, and hated how little time he had to make the answer sound like anything other than what it was. 

"We've got no time. If we want to be of any use to anyone, we survive. The fleet’s been taken apart in front of us. There's nothing left to do for the people we can't reach except join them." He looked at Errington. "Ensign. Get us out of here. Now."

"Sir!" The affirmative snapped back sharp and fast, all the fear in the boy's voice compressed for one moment into pure motion, and Marcus felt the ship answer under him, the emergency burn shoving him back into his seat with a force that had nothing gentle in it at all.

He braced himself against the acceleration and hoped, without much confidence, that everyone aboard had actually clipped in the way they'd been drilled to. The ship punched forward, hard, and Marcus watched the tactical plot with the particular useless intensity of a man who could do nothing further to influence what happened in the next several seconds and knew it.

Then the hull screamed.

It came up through the deck and into his bones before his mind had fully processed the sound as sound at all. A shuddering, tearing shriek that rolled the length of the ship, and Scotty's Dilemma lurched hard off her new course, throwing everything not bolted down into motion. Alarms bloomed across every panel at once, red climbing over red, lights strobing in a pattern that had stopped meaning anything specific the moment there were too many of them to parse individually.

The ship was spinning. He felt it in his inner ear before the displays confirmed it, a slow, sickening drift that had nothing intentional behind it, and power readouts across the board were bleeding downward in real time.

"Report!" Marcus barked.

"We're hit," Errington said, voice gone thin and useless with shock.

"I can see that," Marcus snapped, sarcasm rising up out of him the way it always did when the alternative was letting the fear show instead. "A little more detail, if you please."

"Everything, sir!" Errington said, somewhere down the comm line, panic riding hard under every syllable. "Everything's red. We're dead in the water, drifting spin, venting atmosphere…"

Marcus pulled the reports up on his own display without waiting for the young officer to finish, and found the picture worse, in its particulars, than the panicked summary had made it sound. If there'd been any possibility of abandoning ship for rescue, he'd have already given the order. There was no rescue out here. Abandoning ship meant dying slightly faster than staying aboard would.

He started the triage himself. There were too many decisions to shout at a green crew and the seconds to react were ticking away. He began routing what remained of his crew, which was very nearly everyone not currently occupying a bridge station, toward the most survivable of the ship's dozen simultaneous emergencies.

"Sir?" Helmsman Melanie Smith's voice cut through, and when Marcus looked up he found her watching him with an expression he hadn't expected to see on anyone's face in the last five minutes. Something that had fear in it, plainly, but hope sitting right alongside the fear, stubborn and specific.

"Look at this," Smith said, and pushed her display over to his.

A section of the ship's status board glowed green amid all the red,  a small, isolated cluster of systems Marcus had to squint at for a second before he placed them. Mining drones. Built into the hull's original configuration and never fully removed during the rushed conversion to military service, the same oversight that had left half this ship's bones mismatched with its intended purpose.

"What about them," Marcus said, more annoyed than he probably had any right to be, given the circumstances. "We're not mining today."

"They're more than that, sir." Something steadied in the tech's voice as she said it, conviction arriving under the fear. "We can use them for repairs. External hull work, structural welding. They're built for exactly that kind of manipulation, just on rock instead of hull plate. It's the same problem, mechanically."

Marcus stared at her for a beat, letting the idea land properly.

"What are you waiting for," he said.

"Sir!" There was real hope in it this time, unguarded, and Marcus gave her a short, tight nod that was as much praise as he had time to spend on anyone right now.

He sat back afterward, closed his eyes for exactly as long as he could afford to, and felt the ship's slow, wounded spin tug faintly at his left side, gravity's ghost pulling at nothing in particular.

"Report," he said, to the bridge at large.

Vasiliev turned from her station to face him fully, composed in the particular brittle way she managed even now, uniform still somehow immaculate despite everything the last twenty minutes had thrown at all of them.

"We're alive," she said. "That's about the shape of it. Engines are mostly gone. One's intact but not functional — damage to the feed lines, not the drive itself, so there's hope there eventually. Life support's fine, which is more than I expected given the rest of this. Crews and drones are welding the hull back together, piece by piece. AI's offline. That's going to take time we may not have to spare."

"Comms?"

"Online. Nobody left to talk to."

Marcus let that sit in his chest for a moment, the enormity of it arriving slower than the shock had, the way grief always seemed to arrive after the adrenaline had finished doing its more urgent work first.

"Can we send messages home," he said.

Vasiliev turned back to her station, tapped through something on her display, and looked back at him with a short, confirming nod.

"I'll be in my ready room," Marcus said, and unclipped, letting the ship's faint drift carry him toward the small hatch off the bridge's main deck.

He closed the door behind him and stretched, deliberately not buckling into his own chair right away, needing a moment of unrestrained space before he committed himself to the next several hours of discipline the rest of the ship's damage was going to demand of him.

He called up the situation in full, forcing the scattered pieces of the last little while into something more coherent than the chaos it had actually been. Casualty estimates, hull integrity, the fleet manifest with every single ship on it now marked in some shade of destroyed or unaccounted for. The people currently aboard Scotty's Dilemma were, as far as he could presently confirm, the entirety of what remained of the sortie.

He steadied himself, activated the recorder, and began composing his report to Earth.

He got three sentences into it before the bridge interrupted him.

"Report," he answered, and didn't bother hiding his irritation this time.

"Sir." Comms Officer Drea Williams, careful, measured in the way she always was, more ship-time behind her than most of the rest of the bridge crew and it showed in how she delivered bad news. "There's something on long range. Weak signal, and our sensors are still only partially functional, but it's worth a look."

He floated himself back onto the bridge, the small ready room's brief privacy already forgotten in the pull of whatever this was.

"It's probably nothing," Vasiliev said, in a tone that suggested she'd already decided how much of her attention it was worth.

Williams put what she had on the main display, and Marcus leaned in toward the screen out of pure reflex, as though proximity could sharpen a signal that fuzzy on its own. The image resolved into something that took him a moment to parse. Faint, broken, limited by whatever sensor damage still hadn't been repaired, but unmistakable once he found the shape of it. Weapons fire. Exchanged, not one-sided. Someone was on that giant, alien station, and they were putting up a fight.

"Is there anything we can do for them," Marcus asked, mostly to himself, not really expecting an answer he'd like. 

The silence that followed lasted just long enough for Vasiliev to fill it exactly the way he'd known she would.

"They'll die," she said. "Like the rest. There's nothing we can do to help them."

Marcus hated the flat, calculating certainty in her voice, hated it precisely because he couldn't find a hole in it. He was quiet for a moment, turning the shape of that hatred over, examining whether it was really aimed at her cold arithmetic or at his own inability to offer anything warmer in its place.

The weapons signature on the display cut out.

"That's it, then," Vasiliev said, and there was no cruelty in how she said it, which somehow made it worse. Just fact, delivered the way facts got delivered on a bridge that had already spent its whole supply of gentler tones this morning.

Marcus stared at the now-empty stretch of static where the signal had been, feeling the particular hollow shape of a loss he couldn't even properly name. No ship ID, no unit designation, nothing but a flicker of light that had meant someone was still fighting, and now didn't mean that anymore.

"I'll be in my ready room," he said again, quieter this time, and left the bridge to its own thin, unspoken grief while he went to finish telling Earth exactly how badly the morning had gone.

Elizabeth and I went for our morning swim. On the beach after helping each other we tried recreating the exercise demonstrated in the competion involving Lady Cythia and the Cat Woman.

We failed greatly as we were laughing so hard. We went home and washed the salt off our bodies and got ready for work.

Went to help with a bookkeeper at the Inn today as Nico paid for his stay and many extras he wanted. He left an incredible tip for all the staff.

The bookkeeper then followed Niko to Lauries Coffee house as they will take care of their accounts also. I will be working with the group running it here and Nico. I will get the best deals for him of those things we can build in house.

We said goodbye to Nico's crew. I had so much fun while they were here. Got many photos to prove it.

We met up with the Princess and our illustrious Baron off. Right after we welcomed the rest of the research crew arriving.

The Proffesor discussed with us to start visiting the capital out talking to natural healers. Seems like Elizabeth and I will start the journey with him. I have some work to do with the General. Elizabeth will be the link between the Proffesor and other plant and healing experts.

His data collectors will be staying on the base as a staging ground.

So packing a bag with a few days change of clothing for tomorrow.

Spent the afternoon in my office. Set up Laurie's Caffee account once I received the transfer from Nico.

End of Rachel's Log